


the same place where you left me standing

by Isa1187



Series: easy to find [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings in Chapter Notes, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Slow Burn, Smut, Sylvain’s bullshit internal monologue, War Aftermath, background Annette Fantine Dominic/Mercedes von Martritz - Freeform, happy eventually but starts off as hurt no comfort, is it still slow burn if they fuck in the first chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2020-10-18 19:08:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 85,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20644202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isa1187/pseuds/Isa1187
Summary: Sylvain doesn’t have to talk to speak to Felix, not after a childhood of friendship and then a war spent stepping carefully in each other’s blind spots like lovesick, antagonistic shadows.Or: a story about reconstructing your world and yourself.





	1. Mistakes

Sylvain only shuts up when he has a dick in his mouth.

He’s mesmerizing, Felix thinks but does not say as he stares down at Sylvain making choked, helpless, eager noises around his cock. A tear leaks from an unfocused eye as Felix presses in a little closer, a little deeper, biting back a moan at the warmth engulfing him. Sylvain whines but then urges him on, swallowing back as if in anticipation, reaching steady hands up to leave stinging tracks on Felix’s thighs. 

It’ll bruise, he thinks, and moans soft in a way that’s not quite as involuntary as he tries to pretend. His flush would light up his cheeks if they weren’t already pink from exertion and arousal and the overwhelming sight of Sylvain looking up at him, somehow exuding smugness even with his mouth pressed nearly to Felix’s balls and his eyes wide in discomfort and want and his untouched dick standing painfully hard. 

Sylvain doesn’t have to talk to speak to Felix, not after a childhood of friendship and then a war spent stepping carefully in each other’s blind spots like lovesick, antagonistic shadows. Like the ghosts that Dimitri still mutters to, when he thinks no one can hear; like the staved-off starvation in Ingrid’s eyes even in the middle of a feast; like the heavy expectation that Felix feels reaching out from every memory of his father. Like a swordmaster who hacks apart training dummies until his arms are sore and his mind is too numb to string together condemnations. Like a cavalier who smiles and flirts and uses until no one can tell where his heart begins or ends.

“Shut up,” he says harsher than he intends, although Sylvain has still said nothing. He winds a hand through red hair for good measure, yanking back and then pushing forward, fucking himself into Sylvain’s mouth and biting down on his own whimpers. The only answer is the rumble of a laugh that he barely hears but sees in the crinkle of Sylvain’s eyes and feels through through the shift of Sylvain’s throat on his dick and, even more acutely, in the ache of his chest. 

For an instant the distant sounds of cheering and laughter invade the comfortable darkness of the room, the victory celebration continuing late into the night. Felix grits his teeth as it fades and widens his eyes against the unbidden image of Dimitri snapping the necks of his former classmates, stepping through a gore-filled room to ascend a bloody throne, waving to ten thousand cheering commoners who celebrate him only for murdering the right person. 

The silence is broken by Sylvain’s whine, genuinely distressed this time, as Felix notices that his hand is clenched far too hard in Sylvain’s hair. He lets go as though burned, a few red strands sticking to sweaty fingers as he nudges him back. Carefully, Felix reminds himself. _Gentle_ always seems beyond reach, but _careful_ should be achievable. Has to be, he thinks, staring down at Sylvain’s grimaced panting and his own leaking erection, unsure which one is sending shivers of loss and need through the base of his spine. 

It isn’t achievable, he knows, not today. He should have known that when Sylvain coaxed him into a dance at the victory celebration and smiled his rare, sincere smile and gently tugged Felix back to the room he’d claimed in a distant wing of the imperial castle. He should have known, did know that a stolen bed in a stolen city was the wrong place to do this. But he’d been weak, selfish, lured by the thought of a night spent with his guard down and by his useless heart’s traitor reaction to Sylvain’s trusting smile.

“Sorry.” It’s loud in the emptiness, leaden against the broken rhythm of Sylvain’s panting, completely inadequate. He tries again, forcing himself to meet Sylvain’s unguardedly wary gaze. “The shouting keeps reminding me of our last battle,” he not-quite lies. And finally, in a rush of words that appear before he can consider them, “I shouldn’t have come here. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.” 

While the words still hang in the air Felix watches Sylvain’s expression change, his reflexive unguarded uncertainty smoothed away into equally reflexive fake cheer.

Sylvain shrugs expansively, smile nearly reaching his eyes, tilting his head in careful ease as though Felix is already forgiven. Felix could pretend it’s sincere; Sylvain clearly wants him to.

“Not like you to say you’re sorry for a little thing like that,” Sylvain says, voice croaking on the first word and rasping in and out on the rest. “Can’t say I blame you for being wound up. All the more reason to let out some stress, right?” 

He guides Felix’s hand back to his hair, gently winding calloused fingers into it. “When was the last time, Felix?”

And it’s here, at the sound of his name dripping from Sylvain’s honeyed lips that Felix finally breaks the gaze he’s been determinedly holding. Because Felix knows - sure as he knows that the war is over and his family is dead and his own personal reconstruction is impossible - that Sylvain is hurt and untrusting and limping through life with half a heart, and he still means those last words. The comfort he offers is genuine and concerned, just as his forgiveness is protective and insincere. Sylvain knows that Felix can’t be trusted or forgiven, not here and now. He offers anyway.

“I know you won’t let anyone else this close to you.” Sylvain stops to cough in the middle of the sentence, voice royally fucked up, but the roughness of his vocal cords and his purposely teasing tone do nothing to disguise either his banked fear or his desperate need. 

“This is why.” Felix doesn’t see the point of softening his words when Sylvain knows all of his failings. The lust in his blood hasn’t faded, not even a little, but neither has the anger and fear left by years of war. Hands that have killed so many people that the exact number of graves seems irrelevant don’t relearn kindness.

“You should have someone who isn’t going to hear an unexpected noise and disembowel you,” Felix says, voice wry and taut in its honesty. 

Sylvain’s head tilts in pretended consternation, smile sharper and brown eyes shrewd. Felix braces himself for whatever is about to leave his mouth, but nothing prepares him for Sylvain’s soft exhale against his skin. He leans forward to press a kiss to the side of his neck and the corner of his mouth and then more, trailing downwards with frail kindness. 

He pauses at Felix’s chest, glancing up with a wink and lazily licking over one nipple. He sucks insistently and finally nips, just hard enough to at last draw a gasp out of Felix, who grits his teeth and hovers unsure hands over Sylvain’s shoulders, squeezing amber eyes shut in protest against cruel pleasure and welcome pain. Sylvain laughs, confident that skill and pleasure and exhaustion will keep Felix from leaving. 

“Well,” Sylvain breathes between languid kisses, “who should I have instead? A girl who would cut my crest out of my flesh if she could?” 

And this time Felix’s eyes fall open, staring hazy at the room around him as his heart stutters. This is pleasant, he tells himself. He could let Sylvain kiss his way back down to his cock, wind his hands into silk sheets he can grip as hard as he likes, let himself be undone by the skillful lips of his friend. He could reach down and jerk Sylvain off after, leave purple marks on his neck that will be impossible to explain away, drink in the praise and eager whimpers Sylvain will surely give despite Felix’s lack of any particular skill at this.

It would be easy, simple, safe. 

It would make every other night of his life harder. 

Felix considers every word carefully before he speaks this time, tugging Sylvain away to fix him with an inescapable amber stare. 

“And I should have someone who doesn’t think of me as a convenient replacement for a love he’ll never find.” There’s stillness as soon as he speaks, and Felix knows there’s no going back. 

They both know the words are lies, and they both know the words are earnest. Sylvain’s smile freezes into the thing he uses when he breaks girl’s hearts. Felix hates it. 

“Wow,” Sylvain says, “and here I thought you could act like a person for once.”

The words are lies, and they aren’t, and they can’t be unsaid. 

Felix pushes Sylvain back once and for all, gathers his clothes, leaves with his shirt still off and his hair undone and a pit of unthawed ice in his heart. He doesn’t linger outside Sylvain’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like angst kids
> 
> I sat down to write some good old smut. It turned into pure angst, and now it's the first chapter of a whole post-game fic where Felix and Sylvain work through their personal issues, dammit.
> 
> You should know that the angst tags on this thing are serious. Felix is getting dragged through the aftermath of a war, coming to terms with a lot of death, and dealing with all of the very traumatizing stuff that's present in three houses but that isn't really the narrative focus. There's also a lot of tenderness and people trying earnestly to understand and comfort each other. There's also, like, medieval agriculture. It's a shippy slow-burn Felix/Sylvain fic, a war reconstruction fic, and a fic about dealing with your fear of intimacy and other problems.
> 
> Despite the sex in the first chapter this is very slow-burn. It's going to be a while before these guys fuck again.


	2. Gravedigger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Processing his feelings isn't Felix's strength at the best of times. The whole aftermath-of-a-bloody-battle-through-Adrestia's-capital isn't helping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, once again, Angst. Buckle up. 
> 
> Warning for descriptions of corpses and general war aftermath throughout this chapter.

The first thing Felix sees when he opens his eyes is the grey stone ceiling of an unfamiliar room. He gets up painfully, puts his abandoned shirt back on, nursing an ache in his head that isn’t quite a hangover. The shuttered windows open easily, letting in a warm breeze so unlike the harsh weather of Faerghus. Sunrise is just beginning, faint light spilling into the room and doing nothing to wash away the grimness. 

Memories of the previous night don’t come spilling back. They’d never left in the first place, his own words and Sylvain’s answering cruelty bouncing around his head until he’d barely gotten an hour of sleep. Not that sleeplessness was a new feeling - it’s hard to sleep soundly when each day is spent slicing through a new set of enemies. This was a new sickening permutation, though. Somehow the immediate memory of Sylvain’s kisses and hopeful smiles lodged itself in his heart as deeply as the feeling of blood on his face.

Felix turned the thought over a few times, tried to observe it dispassionately, ignored how his hand clenched on the hilt of his ever-present sword. It was hardly the first time he’d hurt Sylvain. It wouldn’t be the last. It wasn’t even the first time it had bothered him more deeply than he’d admit to anyone. But this? In the wake of a battle that left old classmates dead and a city shattered and corpses strewn on the streets? And all he can think of is his stupid crush on his stupid childhood friend and the way he’d intentionally, _carefully_, ripped him to shreds.

Well. That was that, and Sylvain would forgive him or he wouldn’t when Felix broke and crawled back to his door, and right now there’s an eternal list of things to be done. Felix wrests his gaze away from the memory of Sylvain’s brittle smile and back to his surroundings. 

It’s a room like any other he’d slept in during the war. Cold grey walls, lush carpets, a bed pillowy with down. Personal effects are scattered all around - a small pile of books here, a quill and half-written letter on the desk, a silver-backed hairbrush and a small portrait of some anonymous man on the nightstand. Someone had a life here. For all he knows this room still belongs to some retainer or minor noble who’s too terrified to request that he find somewhere else to sleep.

Except it had been empty when he got here in the middle of the night, wasn’t it? So the room belonged to someone who’d run from the castle or, more likely, was dead. There were enough corpses scattered around, after all. They didn’t all belong to soldiers.

The end of a war and the latest event in a years-long litany of his own bitterness seem like poor reasons to break his lifelong habit of rising at dawn, eating a mouthful of whatever the kitchens are serving, going to do whatever needs doing. And the sooner he’s out of this room the sooner he’ll stop wondering about its former occupant.

Felix makes his way down cold hallways, fumbling towards the kitchens with both the uncertainty of someone finding his way through a new place and the unthinking confidence of someone navigating a castle that is, after all, like any other castle, equipped with all the same amenities, built for the same reason, constructed to be a home and a center of politics and a beast of war. 

He’s never walked through such a bloody castle.

Night, for all its faults and loneliness and sleeplessness, had one virtue: it hid the blood. The trickling brightness of dawn doesn’t illuminate enough to wash away the shadows, just enough to make the aftermath of conquest impossible to ignore. Even far from the center of the fighting there are splatters of gore, blank-eyed corpses, tracks of blood where the injured dragged themselves away. Unoccupied rooms stand with doors half-open and belongings strewn around, left in disarray by frantic families collecting only the practical and the precious before running for their lives. 

The kitchens are exactly where he guessed they would be, on the ground floor near one of the back castle walls for easy access to gardens and livestock. They’re also closed - why wouldn’t they be? The servants of Edelgard’s empire had no reason to expect fair treatment. Plenty of wars ended with the slaughter of everyone unfortunate enough to have breathed the deposed ruler’s air, lived in her castle, cooked her favorite soup. Why would they expect the boar’s army to be kinder? 

Felix stares into the empty kitchen. He’s tired. It must be tiredness that calls up phantom sounds of laughing cooks and the distant mutter of conversation and bright hiss of food sizzling in pans. 

“I thought I heard someone,” a gentle voice says behind him. “I’m afraid we don’t have anyone to properly staff such a fine kitchen, but I’m sure I can find something to prepare for breakfast.” 

He forces the hand gripping his sword to loosen, forces himself to turn around without snapping. “Mercedes.” It was the only greeting she was going to get.

Her too-perceptive smile spreads across her face. Had she noticed the way he tensed as if expecting even his own allies to attack him? Probably - Mercedes always seemed to know more than she said to any one person, the busybody. 

“Please,” she says, stepping into the kitchen, “make yourself comfortable. This will only take a few minutes. I’d appreciate the company,” she adds at his continued hesitation. “It’s so easy to be jumpy in an unfamiliar place. Dedue was going to help with food preparation but he’s tending to Dimitri.” 

There’s no reason for Felix to stay. He had a good meal the night before, there’s work to be done elsewhere, Mercedes’s cooking is always too sweet for him. And, with her gentle smile and talk of the goddess, Mercedes always tries so hard to help. She always pries. 

But in his minute of hesitation Mercedes is already rustling through the kitchen, piling pans and bags of flour and armfuls of vegetables onto the counter with easy familiarity. She’s speaking comfortably into the silence, too used to his mannerisms to expect much of a response. 

“I know that celebrations seem wasteful during war,” she’s saying as she mixes up a simple batter, “but I think we all needed the assurance. It helps to see everyone let down their guard and laugh a little, doesn’t it? Everything else seems a little more achievable now.” 

Everything else - the cleanup after a battle, the reconstruction of three countries. Felix shrugs. “I don’t disagree.” 

She hums thoughtfully. “I barely saw Sylvain. It’s unusual for him to leave a party before dancing with everyone there, isn’t it?” Her smile is a gentle invitation rather than a demand. 

“Why would I know,” Felix snaps. 

“No reason, I suppose.” The statement is phrased as a surrender, although Mercedes is as serene as ever. She heaps batter onto one of the stoves and the savory smell of frying dough fills the room. For a moment the morning is almost peaceful, between the gentle sound of the stove and the quiet clatter of Mercedes’s cooking.

“These are done, Felix.” She hands him a paper-wrapped pile of skillet bread filled with fragrant onions and slivers of olive and red pepper. “I suppose you won’t be back for lunch, so eat these.” A tiny frown finally breaks through calm serenity. “Don’t exhaust yourself too badly.” 

Felix slips the packet into a spacious cloak pocket and grabs one more chunk of bread to eat on the way out. “Thank you,” he says grudgingly. “I’ll try.”

* * *

The streets are ruined. It is not Felix’s fault. The burned homes were lit on fire by mis-aimed spells from Edelgard’s army and by his own side’s frantic fighting. 

The bodies lining the streets are more Empire than Kingdom; both a blessing and a curse. His father’s - his own - forces survived nearly intact, perhaps unsurprisingly given their elite training. The reconstruction of Faerghus will take years, but at least there will be soldiers to fight off bandits during the process. Years of trampled fields painstakingly reseeded, years of relations between noble houses slowly mending, years of people starving as consequence of a war’s worth of conflict and neglect; a punishment for sins they’d had no part in. 

Already the bodies are being moved. Not out of the city, where most will eventually be buried in mass graves. They’re shifted slowly to the sides of the streets and carefully laid out face-up, Faerghus soldiers toiling side-by-side Empire guards, the grim work somehow serving as a temporary unifier rather than a reminder of yesterday’s war. The dead of Faerghus are moved to one side, the soldiers of Adrestia to the other. 

Citizens caught and killed in the awful clash of armies are left awkwardly in the middle, impeding the paths of anyone moving through the city. Soldiers on both sides let their gazes slide away from the faces of the undeserving dead. 

As Felix moves slowly through the carnage the first survivors begin to step out of the basements and bedrooms they huddled in, encouraged by the silence and by dawn’s slow light. The soldiers who avoided looking at the bodies of fallen citizens stare straight through the eyes of the living, rigid in fear, as though grief will pass over them as long as they don’t acknowledge it. 

Felix makes himself meet the eyes of every mangled corpse left staring in the middle of the street. _They deserve better_, an unbidden thought speaks through ten years of postponed mourning: _they deserve to be seen and remembered with grief_. He notes the thought, acknowledges the pained little voice, shoves both back under the urgency of things that must be done now. 

There are fewer bodies as he moves further from the castle, and the streets blessedly go from being blood-soaked to merely splattered. Out so far from the epicenter of the fighting no one has begun the labor of sorting Empire dead from Kingdom, noting down distinguishing features or checking for letters tucked into inner pockets to be mailed in case of the bearer’s death. He’d heard even the soldiers who could barely read or write had taken to carrying such letters, desperate not to die with things left unsaid. _Don’t you wish your family had followed that habit_, the voice of grief speaks again. 

The thought lingers inconveniently long, but fades as they always do. Felix spends the hours disentangling bodies from each other, sorting the dead into three neat categories, matching broken swords and severed heads to bloodied torsos. He probably gets some of them wrong, he notes in a distant way; he had never been good at puzzles. 

Afternoon is turning into evening when someone clears their throat. Felix pauses where he’s clearing the last body on - what, the fifth street? The sixth? - dimly registering that his friends must have noticed his absence. He looks up expecting Ingrid or Mercedes, and not hoping for Sylvain. It’s none of them, no one he recognizes, just a woman whose tears have already stopped falling. 

She flinches as he looks at her. No wonder, considering the gore ground into his boots, the emptiness of his stare, the lingering smell of death and the way a blood-soaked hand rests on his sword. She has every reason to recoil from Felix. She doesn’t.

“Can I help you?” Felix asks after a long moment of silence. 

“My brother was stationed near here. I haven’t been able to find him.” 

The implication is clear, and a dozen cruel answers float beneath Felix’s tongue. _For all you know I killed him_, and _We’ve all lost brothers_, and _You’d be better off not seeing the lifeless thing he’s become_. 

“Describe him,” is what actually makes it out of his mouth. 

Her nod is minute. “He has red hair like mine, long enough that you can see it under his helmet. He’s tall. There’s a green scarf he always wore into battle.” She sighs. “Grandmother made it for him. She said it was good luck.” 

_Not lucky enough_, Felix keeps himself from saying. He grunts instead. “I haven’t seen him.” A certainty, not something he says to drive her away. There’s always a moment of distraction when he kills a red-headed man. “Do you know exactly where he was stationed?” 

The woman - should he ask her name? He’d be lying if he said he cared - gives a tiny, resigned shrug. “It was in this neighborhood. He said he was guarding a ballista.” 

Felix lets go of any hope that the man had survived the battle. Faerghus had taken the ballistas first, killing the guards, before the Imperial army had the chance to realize they were fighting a losing battle. The ballista he leads her to is splintered from overuse and looms over a tidy pile of broken soldiers. 

He waves her back and begins the slow work of picking apart the pile of limbs and blood, laying bodies out carefully. The fourth one wears a green scarf. Felix lifts it with a tired grunt and carries it to her, eyes lingering on a lance wound that had killed the man and on copper hair spilling out from beneath a helmet. 

“Here,” he says, softly. “I’m sorry.” It’s as inadequate as any other apology.

She doesn’t react with the sobs he expected, and somehow the sad acceptance in her eyes is worse than open grief. She just presses her lips together in a determined line and stares at the face as though she hopes he’ll morph into someone else. Her fingertips barely drag over the scarf, skirting the edges of bloodstains. 

“I should bury him,” she says distantly. “Do you suppose there’s any room left in the graveyard?” 

Felix shrugs. “Right now there might be. It will be full in a few days.” It’s beginning to get dark already. He could leave this woman alone with her grief, let her figure out how to bury her brother. “Where’s the graveyard you’re thinking of? I’ll carry him there.” 

Laughter breaks her voice, thin and sharp as cracking ice. When it dies he’s still staring just to one side of her eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Yes,” she says finally. “If you don’t mind. You don’t have to.” 

He shrugs, again - it seems all of his communication is in shrugs and grunts these days. His voice is wry, like he’s speaking a terrible joke. “It seems the least I can do. Considering the circumstances.” 

The half mile to the graveyard is nothing compared to the hours of work already today, but his arms begin to tire. Corpses always seem heavier than they should, like death settles as a physical weight onto each body. The plot of land is surprisingly large for a city graveyard, and much of the ground is unoccupied. Weeping families and wilted flowers are already gathering over newly-dug graves. 

Normally there was a procedure to this sort of thing, Felix is vaguely aware. Permission to get, services to plan, blessings to perform. Today he finds a shovel in the little groundskeeper’s shed and lets the woman lead him to a suitable little plot of dirt. She doesn’t protest when he starts digging. 

“You might as well bring your family and something to mark the grave. There won’t be room if you wait until tomorrow.” 

She nods, takes several steps back before turning to leave, as though she’s scared to turn her back on him. Her footsteps are drowned by the weeping of every other mourner. 

Felix hefts the shovel. It’s heavier than a sword and just as lethal. He’s never done this sort of labor, had even managed to avoid gardening duties back at academy. The dirt is softened by recent rain and the shovel sinks in easily enough, but there’s only a shallow groove when his shoulders begin to ache. 

It’s fine. The ache of his muscles is nothing new. This is only a different sort of training. And if he takes a break there will be nothing to distract him from the cries of the mourners and the empty eyes of the nameless corpse. 

For years his sword was the right tool for nearly every task. Now a shovel is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jesus fuck i hope you guys like angst
> 
> I promise Sylvain's in the next chapter. Sylvain and Felix actually get to interact in the next chapter. This is still a slow-burn shipping fic that will eventually end happily, we're just detouring through every other type of angst on the way there.
> 
> So sometimes you sit down to write a nice, angsty slow-burn fic with lots of angst-fucking and then you get fucking bodyslammed by the need to also write war reconstruction fic. And you research what actually happened to large numbers of bodies during wars, learn some facts too horrifying to include in your made-of-angst fic, and drag your main character into a painful situation to set up several important emotional realizations a few chapters down the road. That happens to everyone, right? 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with this so far! Let me know if I made any typos or anything. Feel free to leave criticism or suggestions, I feel like my writing's rusty and I'd actually like some feedback. Unless your criticism is "angst is awful and i hate it," in which case you should probably find something else to read.


	3. Bloodstains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has fewer corpses, less angst, and much more Sylvain.

The walk back to the castle is longer than it should be. Or maybe it’s just Felix’s movements that are slower than usual, stumbling forward on legs that have already carried far too much weight today.

The guards at the castle gate ask no questions, but their eyes follow him as though they aren’t sure whether to refuse admittance or send for a healer or something else entirely. Felix straightens his shoulders and stalks by them before they can decide, and even that crude approximation of his usual posture makes his back burn more insistently. Perhaps they’ll send for one of the others, and the thought makes him walk faster. He plans to be back in his stolen room before he has to see the gentle disappointment in Mercedes face, or Annette’s concerned nagging, or Sylvain’s - well. It’s a small comfort that no one knows where’s he’s sleeping; it’ll take them a few hours to track him down tomorrow morning. 

There are enough stairs between the entrance and his room that he almost regrets fleeing so far from his and Sylvain’s ill-considered dalliance. Felix considers picking some other bed - it’s not as though he’d be leaving anything important behind - but no. Every stolen room he stays in will add the image of another corpse to his long list of interrupted lives.

The castle is as unnaturally quiet as ever, but at night he can almost pretend the emptiness of the halls is normal. He can ignore the unlit torches and the lack of any voices spilling out into the hallway. It’s just a quiet night, he thinks bitterly as he reaches his own door, like any other. 

Felix’s stolen room has a pitcher of drinking water and a half-full washbasin set beneath a small mirror. The feeling of his own dry throat is suddenly at the forefront of his mind. When had he last stopped to drink? Certainly not since he’d started digging the grave. Late that morning, then, when he’d taken a break to eat some of the skillet bread Mercedes had pressed on him, before the gore had crept in under his gloves and made it impossible to contemplate touching food. That explained the painful lump in his throat he’d felt while digging the grave. It was dehydration, nothing more. 

He pours a glass of water and takes small sips, hands leaving dark smudges of mingled dry blood and moist dirt on the delicate surface. His groan echoes off stone walls as he steps out of his clothing. Dirtstained pants and a blood-soaked tunic pile on top of filthy boots, his shoulders aching even with the mundane effort of raising his arms to slip his undershirt over his head. 

They probably aren’t ruined, at least. The clothes of Faerghus nobility are made to be worn in and out of battle, in mud and rain. Still, someone would have their work cut out restoring them to something wearable. Did they have a laundry rotation? Was the washroom even usable? Well, it was tomorrow’s problem. 

For now… Felix sighs as he surveys himself. Was it too much to ask that the blood and grime ruin only his clothes? There was filth dried under his fingernails, in the creases of his knees, smudged to one side of his nose, probably caked into his hair. One half-full washbasin wouldn’t be nearly sufficient to fix this mess. He wets a small handtowel and scrubs the blood off his face, but the water is saturated by the time his hands are mostly clean. Wiping at the line of grime collected where the cuffs of his gloves ended only spreads it. He adds “take a bath” and “clean the washbasin” to tomorrow’s list of tasks. 

The reflection in the bloody water draws his eye, no matter how hard he tries to look away. It’s older, sharper, angrier than he remembers, not that he’s made a habit of looking in mirrors lately. Felix watches it like a stranger as he carefully undoes his hair, fingers worrying at the worst of the matted strands. His reflection still has tired eyes and blood-streaked skin, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. He breaks his own eye contact, steps to the bed on aching feet, collapses between layers of finely-made sheets. Consciousness fades too quickly for him to observe the process. 

He does not dream. 

* * *

There’s bright light, and stiff pain is spreading through every part of him, and the harsh sound of someone calling his name in near-panic adds noise-induced stabs of headache to the laundry list of his discomfort. Felix pries his eyes open. It’s bright - why is it so bright? - too bright to see anything but a human-sized blur and some interesting spots of light as his brain tries to process too much information at once. 

“Hng,” Felix says, finding a throat too dry to manage normal speech. He tries again. “Loud,” he manages this time, eloquently. But his point must be understood because the noise stops. 

The bed dips under someone else’s weight and then there’s a hand fearfully resting over the pulse point of his throat and hesitantly reaching up to unstick matted hair from his forehead. And Felix must be in worse shape than he thought, because his reflexive punch and snapped “get the fuck away from me” turn into a painful twitch of one shoulder and another faint grunt. He grinds his teeth and forces his eyes open once again. 

Sylvain. Of course it’s Sylvain, working filth out of his hair with awful tenderness and staring down with unmasking concern. Their eyes lock for the briefest moment before Felix can’t bear the way it seems to suck all the air out of the room and forces himself up on protesting elbows just for an excuse to look away. 

“What are you doing here.” Dehydration and a days worth of labored breathing make it hard to add any particular inflection, much as he’d like to direct his most poisonous tone at Sylvain, shock him into abandoning his gentleness. A small part of his mind notes the similarities to two nights ago, his own undress and the roughness of his voice and Sylvain’s hesitance at approaching any closer than he already is. 

“Hey now, Mercedes said you left early yesterday morning and no one’s seen you since.” Sylvain stretches the stupid self-conscious way he always does when he’s pretending ease. “Can’t blame a guy for worrying. You didn’t even drop by to grab some breakfast and goad me into sparring with you.” 

Felix drags himself up while glaring away from Sylvain, joints and muscles groaning. Should’ve stretched before falling asleep, he observes. Nothing to be done about it now. He grimaces at the blood still smudged on his pitcher and drinking glass but pours a fresh cup of water anyway, half to ease the rough burn in his throat and half to delay his reply to Sylvain. 

Who is, he observes from the warped reflection in the pitcher, staring. The hand Sylvain brushes through his hair now is nervous, not the faked confidence of his languid stretching. His eyes are wide with what could be worry or resentment or longing or something else entirely - but probably all of them, Felix considers. They often seem to go hand in hand, with Sylvain. 

“We won the war,” Felix says. “Can’t I sleep in for once? Will that really send you into such a panic?” He rifles through the pack he keeps his spare equipment in until he finds a torn pair of pants that should have been thrown away weeks ago. They’ll do for now. Best to spare his good clothes the corpse-stench that must still linger on his skin. He turns around, finally, ready to face whatever it is Sylvain’s about to say. 

“Uh huh.” Sylvain’s chuckle is light and unconvinced. “Uh, yeah, remember every time you’ve bitten my head off for not getting up at the crack of dawn?” He clutches at his chest dramatically and shifts his voice to something deeper and sharper in a crude imitation of Felix. “Sylvain, you’re going to die in battle if you keep this up. Sylvaaaaain, one of these days I'll leave you behind. Sylvain, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” His casual grin cracks back into open concern as he gestures to the bloody clothes and red-stained washbasin and to Felix himself. “You look like a corpse, buddy. Heh, you smell like one too.” 

And Sylvain isn’t even wrong, is he? What must he have thought, seeing a naked, unconscious body at the center of a bloodstained room? “...Oh. I was - you shouldn’t have worried.” Felix casts around for anything to distract himself from the pained creases around Sylvain’s eyes. His hair’s still down, isn’t it? There must be a spare hair tie somewhere here. But he’s barely started searching before Sylvain’s reaching out and slipping a thin black band off his wrist. 

“You forgot to take it when you made that exit.” Sylvain doesn’t smile or blame. He doesn’t look away. He just stands there, hand outstretched, not coming any closer, letting Felix close the last inches of distance between them. 

Like always. 

And like always, in the end Felix does. 

They’re both silent as Felix twists his hair up into his customary ponytail, dislodging a little shower of dried blood flakes as he does. When he looks up Sylvain is admiring him, eyes tracing the sharp lines of his face and resting on the smooth planes of his chest. 

Sylvain shrugs, sheepish. “So,” he says instead of apologizing, “cleaning this up looks like a two-person job.” 

Felix scoffs. “I think I can find the laundry and some clean water on my own, thanks.” 

“Oh, I can help with those too, but I wasn’t just talking about the murder scene you left in here. How long do you want to spend picking chunks of intestine out of your hair? I mean, man, you smell like someone left you out to rot for a few days and you can barely lift your arms. How easy do you think it’s gonna be to scrub that shit off your back?” Sylvain circles Felix appraisingly, once, while Felix glares. Not at anything really, just at the universe in general. “You know, that might actually be shit? It’s pretty disgusting.” 

“Leave me alone if it’s so disgusting.” It’s not Felix’s best retort, but the physical discomfort combined with Sylvain’s appraising stares are leaving little room for thought. 

Sylvain sighs at Felix’s continued recalcitrance and rising blush. He would whistle but, nah, he’d just get a kick in the shin and a definite refusal. 

“Come on,” Sylvain says, pushing impatience into his voice - it always seems to motivate Felix better than encouragement. “If you don’t let someone else know you’re not dead Mercedes is gonna go to Ingrid and Dimitri, and you don’t want them knocking down your door, do you? Because they will literally break down your door.” 

Felix’s silent sneer is apparently the best answer Sylvain is going to get. Maybe eventually he’ll start learning to use his words. And it’s not like Sylvain’s winning any awards in the communication department, they’re just both failing in different ways. But hey, the war’s over, it’s time to start cleaning up messes, right? It should probably include both of their emotional shit. Hence why he’s here, in Felix’s room, trying to keep his whatever-they-are from dying of whatever-he’s-been-doing, holding onto sincerity with both hands. Well, with one hand. It’s a work in progress. 

But Felix is still not-quite-staring at him with that indecipherable closed-off expression, isn’t he? 

“C’mon, please? You’re always trying to get me to take care of myself. Let me return the favor.” Sylvain guesses he’s won when Felix’s glare softens into a tiny frown. Felix always hated being called a hypocrite, he must consider it a good enough excuse to accept some kindness.

“I’ll take a bath, you go do the laundry and tell Ingrid to stay out of my room,” Felix says, shoulders still held stiff and rigid. 

A full sentence, no insults, and Felix even ignored the obvious opportunity to complain about Dimitri - the terse response added up to far more enthusiasm than Sylvain expected, really. “Yeah, great! But I’ll meet you in the bathhouse after I take care of this shit,” he kicks the pile of bloody clothes and immediately regrets it when a chunk of mud clings to his boot. 

“That’s not what I agreed to.” 

“Look, I’m honestly concerned that you might pass out and drown. You still kind of look like a corpse.” And he takes the moment of effort, of panic rising deep in his gut like poison, to let go of all his pretty smiles. “I’m not sure you should be alone at all right now, Felix. And if you don’t meet me there I’m going to tell Ashe to drop off that book he keeps recommending to you and you’ll have to explain the blood to him.” 

The twist of Felix’s mouth, a small nod, and his annoyed gaze lowering to the footprints tracked all over the room will do as an answer for now. It’s an agreement, however grudging; perfect. 

“...So,” Sylvain says, eyeing the looming pile of things-covered-in-gods-know-what with some trepidation, “do you have a spare bag or something to carry those in?” 

Felix smirks. “No. Get covered in blood,” he says, and pulls on an old shirt, and leaves. 

“Well shit,” Sylvain says, even though no one’s around to hear. He sighs. And then sighs again, more dramatically - isn’t he entitled to a bit of drama right now? And finally strips the (bloody) sheets off the bed and uses them to bundle up the (even bloodier) pile of clothes. It doesn’t help much.

The laundries are in the same general direction as the kitchen and it isn’t long before he hears faint, familiar voices. Mercedes, Dedue, and Ashe practically camped out there whenever they could be spared from their other duties, and everyone else tended to follow the cooking enthusiasts. 

And normally, hey, great! Groups of people, cheerful conversations, freshly-baked sweets, maybe a little drinking are all really Sylvain’s thing! But right now he grits his teeth and hopes to the heavens that he doesn’t run into anyone. Especially Ingrid. 

His wish is half-granted. It’s Annette who appears at an intersecting corridor, skipping and humming to herself as she heads to the kitchens. Like, actually skipping and humming. How did anyone manage to have so much energy?

She stops and grins at him. “Sylvain! Mercie and Ashe just made the most amazing meal. You should come have some!”

“Yeah, uh, maybe later,” he says, the bundle of stinking fabric in his arms getting in the way of his normal expansive gestures. “I’ve sort of got some chores to do right now.” 

Annette’s expression shifts from the cheerful smile of running into a friend to distress at, well, everything else. 

“Wait, what happened to you? And what is that smell?” And, with increasing concern, “Is that _Felix’s_ favorite coat?” 

“Okay, look, I can explain,” Sylvain says, despite definitely not being able to explain. Shit, he doesn’t even know what Felix did yesterday. This whole conversation is starting to feel perversely like one more bad breakup, except it isn’t, it’s his friend asking why he’s carrying his other friends’ blood-covered clothes. “Felix is fine, he spent yesterday, uh, digging graves or something,” which seems like a solid guess based on the blood and the whole lingering-stench-of-death thing, “I’m dropping off his laundry, tell Mercedes he’s fine and don’t let her sic Ingrid on me, thanks!”

Sylvain makes his escape as quickly as he can without breaking into an actual run, ignoring the confused furrow in Annette’s forehead and her call of “Sylvain?!” Well, she’d definitely tell everyone what he said, so technically that’s one item off his “keep Felix alive and only a little pissed off” to-do list. The Felix to-do list. And, shit, that was a little too close to a phrase that brought up recent memories of a dark room and Felix’s moans and - shit. Sylvain buries his head in his hands in frustration, remembers why that’s a bad idea right after he gets a faceful of corpse stench, says “ah fuck” with a sort of resigned acceptance and grimly drops the whole bundle off in the laundry room. Hopefully someone will take care of them. They should really make some sort of proclamation that the castle staff can have their old jobs back and won’t be beheaded, huh. 

* * *

When Sylvain finally gets to the bathhouse he’s afraid that Felix has either left already or, worse, actually passed out in the water. But no, the shirt Felix had been wearing was dropped unceremoniously outside the door to one of the smaller pools and Sylvain feels a worryingly strong glow of warmth at the thought that Felix had made it easier for Sylvain to find him. He steps through the door and there Felix is, still half-dressed, sitting at the edge of the bath with just one hand trailing in the water. 

And really, how can Sylvain not stare? He’s right there, the strands of hair escaping from his ponytail lying against the sharp angles of his face, calm and unguarded for one moment in a thousand moments. 

The spell breaks quickly. “Well? Is Ingrid going to kill me?” He scowls over at Sylvain, but not really at him. 

Sylvain’s shrug is broad and reflexive. “I told Annette to let everyone know you’re okay, but she was a _little_ concerned, so you know… maybe?” 

This time Felix’s scowl is definitely directed at him. “Sylvain!” he says - whines, really, it’s definitely a whine, but Felix might punch him for pointing that out. 

So Sylvain waits a moment, with very impressive patience, for Felix to turn his whine into a longer complaint. It doesn’t happen. Felix just sighs again, long and tired. He glances over at Sylvain, giving a barely-there shrug as though Sylvain’s presence isn’t worthy of his notice, and unceremoniously strips and hops in the bath. His hair’s still up, Sylvain notes with too much fondness. He’s going to ruin another hair tie. 

“Are you just planning to stand there? I have better things to do than be stared at.” The way Felix snaps at him should really ruin the moment, Sylvain’s pretty sure. It doesn’t. There’s no actual anger in his voice, just annoyance at being helped, at having to _accept_ help. 

“What, like staring at _me_?” Sylvain’s pushing his luck with that one, probably, but it pays off when Felix’s soft scoffing noise sounds surprisingly like a laugh. Sylvain strips too, taking the time to leave his clothes in a tidy pile, and hops in. 

There’s a moment where they both relax, leaning back against opposite sides of the bath, letting warm water begin its work of easing sore muscles and tired minds. There’s another moment, quite soon after, where Sylvain reopens his eyes and just… observes. 

This is nothing unusual. Sylvain talked Felix into going skinny-dipping about a million times when they were younger, whenever the weather in their frozen territories was warm enough. And there’s little modesty during a military campaign, when jumping into a river might be the only chance to wash off the blood and sweat until they could get back to their base. 

It’s just unusual to see Felix so _relaxed_. He’s leaning back, eyes closed for once, breathing soft and even. And sure, Sylvain can’t resist a few moments staring at his strong shoulders and deceptively wiry arms and, wow, those really are some chiselled abs and somewhere further down there probably are a few bruises Sylvain left just days ago, and - well. He yanks his thoughts away. Sure, Sylvain acknowledges to himself, there are a few things he’d like to do in the baths. Some other time, when it doesn’t feel like suggesting them will shatter this careful peace that Felix so desperately needs. 

Much more important is the way the dirt ground into Felix’s skin is starting to loosen, the blood streaked across the torso starting to stain the water pink, the way he’s holding one arm close as though it hurts to extend it too far. It’s miraculous, really, that Felix’s eyes are still closed - he never closes his eyes unless he’s sleeping. Maybe he is sleeping? But no, his breathing’s not quite that deep or even. Sylvain is doubly glad he insisted on this, if it lets Felix drop the awful tension on his shoulders and the determined alertness of his eyes for just a minute. 

And the moment passes. Felix’s eyes open and fix him with that inescapable golden glare. “You’re staring,” he says, dry enough that it’s closer to a private joke than an accusation. 

“I sure am,” Sylvain says with a little more glee than necessary, grinning as the tiniest flush rises on Felix’s cheeks. “Aaaand you’re blushing.”

“It’s warm in here,” Felix snaps. “We’re both flushed.” 

It’s such a stupid argument, so arbitrary and pointless, that Sylvain can’t help but laugh. Across the water Felix turns his head to hide a smile that Sylvain catches anyway. 

“Aren’t you going to ruin that hair tie if you don’t take it out?” Sylvain says conversationally. Felix glares again but reaches up, wincing as he tries to disentangle it. Sylvain grimaces as he yanks out a few stubborn strands of hair in the process. Felix tosses the tie carelessly behind him. 

“Happy now?” Felix snaps. 

Sylvain tries to hold in his laugh, he really does, but Felix’s hair is a little damp from the baths and a lot stiff and matted from the gods-know-what stuck in it and it’s standing out at the most ridiculous angles, frizzing and clumping, and he dissolves into laughter. It earns him an annoyed splash of water and Felix’s exasperated little “ugh!” as he catches sight of his own reflection. It’s nice, Sylvain thinks, looking over at Felix with probably too much warmth. This is nice. 

Felix dunks his head and resurfaces. His hair’s still lumpy and uneven, but it isn’t gravity-defying anymore. He closes his eyes again and returns to his incredible, miraculous, no-one-will-ever-believe-this relaxation. Sylvain returns to staring. Every so often Felix opens his eyes with another of those long, level, considering looks, but he never objects. 

After four of those considering looks and who knows how much time Sylvain floats himself over to Felix’s side of the bath, making plenty of noise. Felix lazily opens his eyes and doesn’t move away. 

“Mm?” Felix says, with about his usual amount of eloquence, as Sylvain settles next to him and then stretches out to retrieve a few washing cloths and a dish of soap from the edge of the room. 

“It’s really amazing how you smell like rot after soaking for this long,” Sylvain says bluntly. “You’ve still got gunk in your hair and, like, everywhere else. And I can tell you hurt your arm.” 

Felix shifts, moving the arm in question experimentally. “It’s not hurt.” There’s a long pause where Sylvain looks increasingly incredulous and Felix, predictably, frowns. “Fine. The shoulder might be strained. The water’s helping.” 

“Yeah, you really shouldn’t use that thing until one of the healers looks at it. What were you even doing yesterday?” 

“Cleared some corpses. Dug a grave,” Felix says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“All day? By yourself?” Sylvain isn’t even sure why he’s surprised, because of course Felix would find the most inconvenient, worrying, helpful, obnoxious possible way to do something productive. The rest of them were just trying to get the castle facilities functioning and figure out where all of the minor nobility had gotten to and, like, talk about a loose plan for reconstructing and governing Enbarr. But not Felix, no, he had to go out into the streets he’d just fought his way through and carry around a few hundred bodies.

Felix nods. 

“You spent all day dragging bodies around, _yeah_, you’re not used to that sort of weight training, definitely get a healer to look at that arm.” 

Felix just makes a vaguely affirmative grunt, which is honestly a little worrying. Normally he complains a lot more about being forced to answer questions or go to the infirmary or anything, really. But he can’t be that out of it because when Sylvain goes to gently start working one of the clumps out of his hair he _startles_, flinching away, teeth bared and golden eyes wide, reaching for a sword that isn’t there. 

“Hate having your hair washed that much, huh?” Sylvain says casually, as though Felix isn’t standing right there with his head back and his heart racing and his eyes still searching for a threat. It’s a long moment before his breathing evens out. 

“Here,” he says cautiously, once Felix returns to a normal-for-Felix amount of tense. “Come on,” he says, holding a hand out invitingly, “I’m not letting you use that arm, so either you let me do this or you walk around with blood in your hair smelling like the several hundred corpses you _apparently_ moved yourself, idiot.” 

He’s pretty sure the glare he gets isn’t at _him_ so much as at the general concepts of blood, injuries, trauma, and war. Felix moves back into reach anyway, so he can’t actually be angry. 

“Fine,” Felix says. He says that a lot. It must be one of his favorite words, short and sharp and agreeing without being agreeable. Sylvain waits with his hand outstretched until Felix finally sighs, annoyed, and guides it into his hair. “Hurry up already.” 

“People usually consider this sort of thing relaxing,” Sylvain says as he gently untangles a clump of hair, working out the worst of the blood and snarls with a coarse comb. “You’ve heard of relaxation, right? Think you might try it someday?” 

“The more you talk the less relaxing this is going to be.” Felix’s voice is still sharp but he leans into Sylvain’s hand, just the tiniest bit, as though it’s all he’ll allow himself. 

Sylvain does fall silent as he works his hands through Felix’s hair. It’s easy to marvel at its smoothness and the way it drapes over Felix’s back, hangs curtainlike beside his face, follows the weight of his movements. It’s easy to marvel because _hey Felix can I do your ponytail for you_ is one of the things he’s thought a dozen times and never managed to say, and because as far as he knows no one living has seen Felix this vulnerable. He’s certainly the only person who’s been allowed to pause for a scalp massage, teasing out a contented little sigh before Felix inevitably tells him to get on with the rest of the cleaning. 

And Sylvain complies, moving on to rub soap through Felix’s hair, and if he takes a little longer than necessary who can blame him? Not Felix, who is still and relaxed with his head tilted forward. The reflection of his face is tranquil in the water, expression open, eyes closed. 

And sure, it would be easy enough to wash the soap out with buckets of poured water but Sylvain nudges Felix backwards instead, expecting a scoff or a snapped refusal. He’s caught off guard when Felix actually tilts back, half-floating in the water and looking up at him with calm eyes, hair floating out in dark halo. He’s definitely not expecting Felix to close his eyes again as Sylvain keeps running his hands through dark hair far past the point where it’s necessary. 

Felix finally pulls free and stands up, facing Sylvain, amber eyes soft and thoughtful as though he’s considering something. Sylvain stands awkwardly, not quite meeting Felix’s eyes, for once having no idea how to interpret his expressions. But the moment passes, and if Felix has decided anything it’s lost on Sylvain. Besides, he’s leaning back into the side of the bath and closing his eyes, again. 

“You really could fall asleep here,” Sylvain ventures, carefully knocking their shoulders together. It seems a shame to drag Felix all the way back to his room when he’s so clearly comfortable. 

“I know,” Felix says. “I won’t.” 

“No, I mean, go ahead if you want to. I’ll stay right here. Like your private lifeguard.” He winks even though Felix can’t see it.

“Huh.” Felix’s expression goes through about five different levels of annoyance before it finally settles back into relaxation. “...Sure. Too many stairs back to my room.” 

Sylvain resists the urge to lean forward, tuck Felix’s hair behind his ears, kiss his forehead and the side of his nose and his mouth. He settles for brushing their shoulders together again. “I’ll wake you up in an hour or two.” 

Felix grunts his agreement and drifts off, slowly, leaning into Sylvain by millimeters. 

_This is nice_, Sylvain thinks again. It’s - nice, coaxing Felix into taking care of himself, seeing his rare moments of vulnerability, washing blood out of his hair. It’s warm, comfortable, rewarding. And then, hours and years of emotions catching up with him all at once, he thinks _ah, shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miscommunication is OUT ignoring your own emotions because of your crippling fear of intimacy is IN
> 
> What's up the point of view shifted to Sylvain completely against my will. He's at least four times harder to write than Felix. Please tell me he sounds like himself. It's one in the morning, my chapters keep getting longer, I'm terrified of the day I'll have to write a scene with more than three people in it, and I think I need to research war trauma and also medieval agriculture.
> 
> noticed a typo, got a suggestion, think i fucked something up? let me know, i like feedback


	4. Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings, except for angst and mood whiplash. Sorry about the mood whiplash.

Waking up this time is soft and gradual, a rarity in a life spent dragging himself up at first light or being awoken by harsh military sounds. Felix is aware of warmth and comfort before anything else, water surrounding him and someone’s arm gently supporting him. There’s a hand brushing through his hair that he can’t even bring himself to be annoyed about, and a voice murmuring soft.

It’s hard to make out the words at first, but they become clearer as the rest of the world shifts into slow focus. It’s Sylvain, of course, because he somehow allowed himself to be coaxed down to the bathhouse, taken care of and held like he’s someone precious.

And it’s Sylvain talking to him, whispering that he’s been asleep for a while and they both should really get something to eat and reassure their friends that they’re alive, get fresh clothes to wear, get a healer to check Felix’s arm. 

Sylvain’s right, is Felix’s groggy thought. He should open his eyes, make some sound to let him know he’s awake, drag himself out of the bath and get on with all the little activities of living. But the longer he stays here the longer he gets to listen to Sylvain’s quiet monologue, relax into gentle fingers, pretend for a minute that every day starts with a gentle awakening and not with the resigned expectation of blood and thanklessness. 

The thought sends a little sliver of guilt into his heart. Who is he to steal away into such comfort? 

Felix opens his eyes. He shifts away from the gentle hands in his hair and looks up into Sylvain’s smile. It seems different than it was when he drifted off however long ago - more knowing, more rueful, tinged with a different sort of softness than before. It’s probably just wishful thinking and the lingering haze of sleep. 

“Hi,” he says, feeling a little foolish, after a long moment spent waiting for Sylvain to break the silence. 

“Hey Felix,” Sylvain says, smile turning into a grin. “You know, no one’s ever going to believe that you fell asleep in the bath with me? It’s really cute.” 

Felix sternly tells himself that his blush is from annoyance. “Good. I have a reputation to maintain.” 

“Yeah, a stupid reputation. Oooooh, look at meeee, I don’t have any feelings and my only hobby is swords and I never take long baths and I definitely don’t name every stray cat I find.” Sylvain rolls his eyes. “ _ So _ impressive, Felix.”

“I _don’t _ name every stray cat I find,” Felix says because arguing is practically a principle and it seems like the easiest point to dispute. Technically it’s true. There are a lot of stray cats wandering around the average city. He only names the ones he can coax over to greet when he’s well out of sight of anyone he knows. “And I do things other than spar. People know that.” It sounds weak, even to his own ears. 

“Yeah, uh, they really don’t? Remember that time you actually read one of Ashe’s books? I’m pretty sure he thinks he hallucinated it.” 

Sylvain’s comments are quickly going from endearingly obnoxious to actually upsetting, not least because he’s probably right. The asshole. Felix might not be in the habit of introspection but he’s a terrible liar, especially to himself, especially when truth is handed right to him. It’s why so many of his conversations with Sylvain end in anger these days: Sylvain knows Felix too well to overlook all the things about himself that he’d rather ignore. 

It’s with both relief and reluctance that he breaks off the conversation by hauling himself away from Sylvain and out of the bath. The feeling of loss is strong and sudden, and Felix realizes how reassuring his position lounged against Sylvain was only through the unexpected emptiness of its absence. 

He doesn’t turn around as he dries off. Felix doesn’t need to turn around to be sure that Sylvain’s eyes are following him, just as they have been all day, staring boldly in the bedroom and the bath as though looking long enough will fix both of them. 

It’s irritating, Felix tries to tell himself. Presumptive, invasive, discomforting. But he’s a terrible liar, and even with a war’s worth of unhealed hurts and words that might never be said hanging between them it’s more soothing than warm sun on a windy day. He feels seen, cared for, wanted. 

And Felix has rarely felt wanted. 

He must have been lost in thought because Sylvain’s footsteps are behind him now. Felix didn’t even notice the splashing as he got out of the bath. But he takes his time patting his legs dry and slipping his pants back on before turning back to Sylvain, whose arms are crossed and who is, once again, staring. 

“Can’t you even give me some privacy while I get dressed?” Felix snaps, but his heart isn’t in it. And Sylvain can tell, the jackass, because he grins and raises an eyebrow and makes a show of looking Felix over. 

“You can stare right back. I won’t mind.” Sylvain stretches theatrically and winks. 

And Felix doesn’t know - never knows - if he wants to take Sylvain at his word or walk away and leave him standing alone, or punch him hard enough to wipe off that stupid smug grin, or wrestle him to the floor and bite at his lower lip until he whines in pain and then press kiss after soothing kiss. Sylvain would let him do any of them, or all of them. It never makes the choice any easier. 

“Not gonna say anything? This is the fewest times you’ve told me to fuck off in, like, ever,” Sylvain says, stepping closer and absently toying with the hair tie Felix discarded earlier. 

“...it is.” A simple agreement to a statement that barely means anything, but enough for Sylvain to reach out and rest a hand on his bad shoulder. 

Felix doesn’t flinch away, only shudders, allowing. It’s a shock. Touch is always a shock, always an overwhelming amount of pressure and contrast before he acclimates, as impossible to ignore as ice on bare skin. He breathes through it this time, relaxes as the nerve-numbing tingle fades into warm comfort, and shudders for another reason. 

But Sylvain just waves the hair tie in front of his face and says “Hey, Felix, can I do your ponytail?” 

And Felix nods.

* * *

Ingrid corales them all into a room filled with an enormous table, back at the castle, once Felix has taken the half hour needed to let Mercedes poke at his arm and order him - with unusual brusqueness, for her - to not lift anything heavy, do training of any sort, or go off on his own for at least three days. 

“Fuck that,” Felix says to Mercedes, and then can’t meet her disappointed gaze. “...fine.” 

Apparently this meeting they’re having is about _politics_, which leaves a much worse taste in his mouth than blood and dehydration ever have. The thought of sitting in a comfortable room and sipping tea while discussing the course of thousands of lives, deciding what resources to divert to whom and how many men to leave behind to rebuild and how many Adrestian families should be allowed to starve for every Faerghus child. There’s nothing good about it, and besides, who wants Felix of all people to make that sort of decision? His education was battle-focused, he’d rather decide things by duel than debate, and the available options always seem as bad as each other. 

But he’s a duke now. Deciding the course of thousands of lives will soon be almost all he does, day in and day out. So Felix attends, adding political meetings to the long list of hateful things he’s resigned to spending his life with. 

At least there’s one good thing, he thinks as he sits himself down by Annette after everyone else has already gathered. At least it’s a few hours where Ingrid won’t be able to lecture him without looking like a complete jerk. 

“Felix!” Annette hisses beside him. “Where were you?” 

He shrugs. “Out,” he deadpans. 

Annette glares. It isn’t very threatening. “I saw your bloody, ripped-up _ clothes _, Felix! You could have been dead!”

“Clearly I’m fine, okay? Take care of your own problems before sticking your nose in mine.” 

“So you admit you have a problem!” Annette says triumphantly. 

“That’s not what I - no.” 

Annette kicks his shin under the table. It makes a surprisingly loud thunk. Anyone who wasn’t already staring at them turns around just in time to see Felix clutching his leg and Annette start to call him “evil”. 

Sylvain’s chuckling and Ashe is blushing in embarrassment for both of them and Ingrid is probably adding this to the list of things she’s going to bother him about. 

“It’s so good to see you’re acting like yourself again, Felix,” Mercedes says diplomatically from Annette’s other side. 

Felix’s head hurts as he tries to figure out if he’s being insulted or not. And fuck it, it definitely isn’t a compliment, so “fuck you,” he says to Mercedes for the second time that day. 

Across the table Sylvain doubles over, apparently physically pained by the effort of holding in both his laughter and whatever smart-ass joke he’s probably dying to make. Good. Felix hopes he actually breaks something. 

The king - boar - _ Dimitri _\- stands at the head of the room, awkwardly clearing his throat to restore order. Dedue looms to one side, as always; to his other side is the conspicuously empty space left by their old professor’s absence. How is Dimitri taking Byleth’s absence, anyway? Felix wonders, before reminding himself that he doesn’t care. 

“As you know we have some matters to take care of before leaving Enbarr,” the boar says, ever one for an unnecessary introduction. 

“We haven’t settled on a governor to take care of day-to-day matters while we begin long-term reconstruction. It’s unclear how many local officials survived the fighting, but there are reports that Linhardt separated from Edelgard’s army two months ago. We have hopes that he’s still alive and willing to take on some responsibility.” 

A murmur goes through the room, mingled delight at the thought of another classmate’s survival and weary trepidation at exactly how much work lies ahead of them and probably, if Felix has to guess, mild horror at the thought of Linhardt in a position of responsibility. 

“Is that a good idea?” Ingrid voices the doubt that everyone’s thinking. “No offense to Linhardt, but he always spent most of his time avoiding work.” 

“And we still aren’t sure if he’s alive, or how to contact him.” Ashe’s voice is uncertain, although the point is solid. 

“The emperor was quite public about the execution of her political enemies,” Mercedes says thoughtfully, the harsh words seeming unnatural in her soft voice. “I imagine Linhardt would have been made an example of if she’d managed to capture him.”

Annette giggles nervously. “He’d actually be a pretty good governor! He’s so lazy he’ll make a whole structure just so he has people to delegate to, and that’s what we need, right?” 

The room echoes with the thoughtful sounds of people who aren’t quite convinced but really wish they were. 

Despite his best attempts to pay attention Felix finds himself tuning out much of the meeting, still more tired than he’s pretending, speaking up with arbitrary annoyance whenever Sylvain’s glances become too concerned or someone prompts him for an opinion. The topics are all far removed from anything he has experience with, anyway, all about supply lines and minor nobles who might agree to diplomatic meetings. 

The meeting is not even close to winding down when a messenger enters, cautiously, looking very much as though she’d rather be anywhere else. 

Felix is the first to notice her. Everyone else is apparently in a heated discussion over whether Edelgard’s few remains should be given an emperor’s funeral or be buried in an unmarked grave or something in between. Felix missed how that particular argument started, but Dimitri is getting agitated. He isn’t snarling like the boar yet, but his good eye is narrowed and his hands are in fists and it isn’t even clear what side he’s taking in the argument, and as _ fucking _ always no one else seems to notice. 

So with a lot of relief and a little relish Felix turns to the messenger. “What is it?” He says as loud as possible, cutting through the argument. 

The messenger steps forward. “Apologies for interrupting,” she says, wide eyes sweeping over a room full of the anger of the most powerful people alive. “We were, uh, asked to alert you if certain people were found.” 

“So who did you find?” Felix says with every scrap of patience he can spare. Out of the corner of his eye he notes that Dimitri is sitting further upright and unclenching his hands; good. 

“There’s a body near the opera house that matches the description of one of the Academy students.” 

The words fall into silence as everyone draws the only conclusion they can. Sylvain’s eyes go wide, Ingrid’s mouth goes slack in horror. The clench of Felix’s own heart must be some terrible miracle; he’d thought it was already as dead as it was going to get. 

The meeting ends quickly after that.

* * *

Dorothea’s funeral is already planned for the following afternoon. 

The opera house didn’t survive unscathed but the roof is still there and most of the walls are standing and the hall is as grand as ever. A little patch of garden was trampled into mud during the fighting. There’s just enough space in it for three graves, and there are three members of the opera company to fill them. Like it was intentional, like the opera house itself prepared for their deaths. 

It’s a joint funeral, not that Felix cares. Not that he should care about Dorothea at all. They were never close. She was a nuisance, nothing more, always interrupting his training and prattling on about marriage and money and opera.

It shouldn’t make sleep impossible. When he slips out into a courtyard and moves dully through a sword drill, ignoring Mercedes’s orders not to use his arm, it’s only from restlessness. If his eyes water until the world in front of him blurs it’s from the pain in his shoulder, nothing more; if there’s a dull ache in his chest it’s from the stress of staying awake until the first glimmers of light appear over the castle walls. 

They were nothing. Occasional sparring partners, occasional dinner companions, usually just two more students moving through the halls and pissing each other off. Although that described Felix’s relationship with almost everyone at Garreg Mach, even the professors, even Sylvain. 

He shouldn’t feel the need to slip out of the castle and walk slowly through the city, alone, ignoring Mercedes’s orders not to wander off by himself. He wants to check on the cleanup progress, nothing more. 

Felix definitely shouldn’t find himself standing outside of the opera house after an hour of wandering, staring at a grand door marred by burn marks. It’s late in the afternoon, past when the funeral was scheduled to start, and far past when his tolerance for lying to himself usually ends. He slips inside as quietly as possible, grateful that the mourners are already seated as he finds his way to the concert hall. 

He didn’t expect such a crowd. The thousand seats are filled and people are standing in the back, stony-eyed children and crying parents mingled with shopkeepers and soldiers. Was the opera really so loved here in Enbarr? Had all of these people heard Dorothea sing? 

It’s easy to ignore the glares directed at him for entering late. The ones that come next are harder, as he’s recognized as one of the nobles who led the army that caused _ this. _Parents clutch their children closer, everyone armed pretends they’re not reaching for a weapon, and person after person sidles away until he finds himself standing alone. 

Fine. He likes the space. 

Felix leans sullenly against the wall and watches the far-off stage, where someone he can barely see is speaking words that are carried crisp and clear to every corner of the hall. It’s some generic speech about what a _ treasure _ the singers were and how their loss is _ regretted_ , how Enbarr is left _ bereft _without their voices, as though they’re only worth mourning for the moments they spent on stage. 

He hates it. He tunes it out, lets his head rest back against the wall, clenches his jaw harder and harder as the speeches blend into each other in a pile of vague platitudes that say nothing about the people who died. 

Until one isn’t. 

Until a speaker - another man, this one harping on _ the merits of beauty_, much to Felix’s regret - is bodily shoved off stage. The audience’s shocked gasp sounds exactly like they’re reacting to a plot twist in an opera. 

Felix’s own shocked gasp follows a minute later, when the woman who so abruptly removed the most recent self-important speaker gathers herself and yells “Get out! Get _out_,” after him. 

Every Garreg Mach student knows that voice, loud and self-possessed and probably a little drunk. It’s Manuela, a professor no longer. Felix had wondered where she’d ended up during the war.

“Your loss? Your _ regret_? You didn’t know them, you didn’t teach them! You’re all the same, going on and on about how sad the city is to lose such beautiful angels.” Manuela’s gesture is true opera, a full-body movement that somehow communicates the world's angriest eyeroll. Scandalized whispers spread through the seats. 

“They were _our_ family! All you can talk about is how sad you are that you won’t hear them sing any longer. Not one of you cares about their lives! And they were all so _ young _ .” Manuela’s voice finally breaks on the last word. She pauses, collects herself, raises her chin like a diva. “Well? _Leave!_” 

The whispers die. A few people applaud hesitantly and then that too fades into silence. Manuela stays, drunk and determined and staring down a thousand people, a queen on her throne. Felix almost admires her. 

There’s no rush for the exits. But the opera staff gather at the front, talking among themselves, and when the next speaker tries to take the stage they firmly guide him away. There’s a slow, awkward shuffle of a thousand people realizing they’ve found themselves somewhere they’re not wanted. 

Felix finds himself half-laughing and half-crying where he stands, the ache in his chest loosening for some impossible reason. The glares he’d received when he entered were nothing compared to the scandalized looks he’s getting now, as the whole room files past him. 

Because it’s the perfect remembrance for Dorothea, after all. The glamour, the nobles giving their empty speeches, the beauty on the surface and the shrewd anger underneath. She would have laughed in delight at the thousand people who turned out in her honor and applauded at her mentor driving them all out with a few angry words and a presence that could crack mountains open. 

Felix’s grief and mirth run out before the crowds finish thinning. He waits, looking towards where Manuela still stands on the stage, until the last stragglers are gone. He straightens up and bows toward the stage, and leaves before he can see the recognition in her eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm taking a little artistic license with what everyone did during the timeskip. The major plot points are all the same as canon, you just can't convince me that Linhardt wouldn't go barricade himself in a warded-up library halfway through the war. Byleth's fine, she just fucked off to be archbishop really quickly because oh my god I'm already writing so many characters here. She'll probably show up for a meaningful conversation or something eventually, I don't know. 
> 
> Next chapter's got more Sylvain again but probably just as much angst. How many thousand words will it take to get one of these idiots to actually talk about their emotions? Place your bets. 
> 
> Guys, the response to this whole fic has been so sweet. I'm delighted by your comments and terrified by your expectations. You know the drill, I love feedback, let me know what you liked or hated. Suggest a one-shot topic, please, I'm serious about needing practice writing groups.


	5. Departure

It’s a cold, clear day by Empire standards when they finally leave Enbarr, nearly a month after they first rode in and swept through the castle. 

It’s a smaller group that rides away, numbers dwindled by thousands of deaths and then by the mundane necessities of leaving warriors and bureaucrats behind to mind Adrestia.

The people barely spare a glance as they leave, except to call children away from the crushing hooves of the war horses. A few heckle, calling out insults on Faerghus and the king. More wave in cheerful familiarity to specific soldiers, who have gone from conquering army to acquaintances, customers, short-term lovers. It’s such a departure from their role only weeks ago, when they tore the city center into shrapnel and crumbled bone. Have they forgotten, already? Decided to blame their dead Emperor? Or do they just follow the path of convenience, divorcing the memories of dead family from the uniforms of the soldiers who killed them?

Somewhere far behind Felix swears he hears a woman shouting the familiar insults that always precede Sylvain’s name at times like these. He doesn’t look around, not caring to check whether Sylvain’s familiar armored bulk rises over the crowd or if it’s just another of the little things, so common these days, that remind Felix of him. 

The Faerghus army’s exodus is a slow mess, focusing on leaving without disrupting Enbarr too badly rather than on speed or organization. There will be hours spent lingering outside the city walls as soldiers straighten their armor and form back into tidy battalions. Never mind that they’ve crushed the only military force in hundreds of leagues that might have cause to attack them; Faerghus armies always march ready for battle. 

Felix keeps his eyes in front of him, trying to be one more face in the crowd. It works. No one stares specifically at him. But it’s the wrong problem to solve. The city around him is achingly familiar as they retrace the steps of their war. He recognizes doorsteps he spilled blood on, streets where he cut through a wall of humanity just to make a path for a king’s revenge. 

There’s a large house with bright glass windows on one corner, set a little back from the road. Felix spent half an hour - more? less? impossible to tell, in the heat of battle - outside it with Ingrid and Ashe and a few hundred soldiers who mostly hadn’t survived, slowly chipping away at the force of pegasus knights determinedly pinning them down. He’d seen faces peeking out of the upper windows, adults and children both, tight and pale in fear and horror at the bloody work he’d filled the street with. He’d ignored them as he cleaned the gore off his blade and wiped blood out of his eyes and moved on to the next battle. 

No blood paints the street today, but there are faces at the windows again. A child waves - at him? - and giggles at the spectacle of so many horses and streaming banners. Felix stares back, unsure whether to wave or just walk away. But the child must not like what she sees in his gaze. She starts crying; the shadow of an adult moves to comfort her. Felix walks on. 

Barely farther from the castle is a stone wall with, really, nothing special about it. It’s no more worthy of notice than any other place in the city. The memory of a splintered ballista and a bloody heap of broken soldiers project themselves onto it. 

Felix stops walking. 

He’d had no plans of lingering. Enbarr is nothing but a former battlefield, a pile of bricks and lives that he has no desire to intrude on any longer. And it’s too bright here, and too warm, the sun rising early in the morning and staying painfully overhead until night, raising blisters on the back of his neck and burning afterimages into his eyes. There is no reason to spend a minute longer here.

Except. 

Except there’s a grave in a courtyard with the body of a man whose name he never bothered to learn. He spent half the night digging a grave, grinding dirt into his bloodied hands and feet, beneath the eyes of a dozen odd family members who looked on grateful and hateful and unsure, not knowing how to react to the Faerghus soldier who insisted on taking this grimmest of tasks onto his own shoulders. And it shouldn’t matter. 

Felix turns; he leaves the path followed by the thousands of sedate horses and laughing soldiers. He goes to find a graveyard.

But he’s barely gone a block before footsteps clatter behind him, and Felix doesn’t have to turn around to identify them. It’s Sylvain, _ of course _it is, light footsteps that would be almost silent if it weren’t for armored boots, the way he hesitates a little as he follows Felix to wherever he’s going. The meddler. 

“What,” he says, not turning around. The footsteps pause. 

“Hey,” Sylvain says. “You know we’re supposed to meet up with the rest of the army.” 

It isn’t a question; of course Felix knows. It’s a perfectly simple instruction. 

“I have an errand to run first,” Felix says, cold as he can, cold as the winter at home. “It’s not your concern.” 

“Yeah? Is it the sort of errand that involves you showing up half-dead again?” Sylvain catches up, falling into step beside him. “I’m gonna say that sort of errand _ is _ my concern, actually. Probably everyone's concern, you know? But I figure you’d be even more stubborn if anyone else showed up, so it’s just me.” He says the last words with a wink and a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. 

“Really? I can’t take a different route through the city without a guard?” Felix’s anger is difficult to contain. It’s palpable, narrowing his eyes and clenching his hands and driving his heels hard into the ground with each footstep. “It’s a personal matter.” The words come out clipped and tight. 

And Sylvain notices; of course he notices, he hesitates and gives a sidelong glance and decides whether to retreat back into fake sincerity. 

He doesn’t. Sylvain drops his smile. He doesn’t say _ anything _ for a hundred yards, which is almost worrying, or would be if Felix was planning to feel any emotion other than desperate anger and distant, abstract sadness. 

“...okay,” Sylvain says, finally. “Look. How about I promise to stay quiet and not be an idiot, and you promise not to stab me.” 

Felix is already glaring, at the world and at the images his own memory insists on tossing in front of his eyes and now at Sylvain, eyes squinting and teeth baring in a snarl that fits better on the battlefield than here. He shouldn’t feel so murderous while he’s on a mission of mourning. He doesn’t clarify that he was never planning to stab Sylvain - never would, honestly, couldn’t bring himself to raise a sword with the intention of hurting his… Sylvain. Felix walks on. 

Sylvain walks beside him. He’s silent, true to his promise, for once. 

It’s infuriating. Infuriating that Felix is being escorted like a child; infuriating that Sylvain feels the need to make such a promise and watch him carefully, out of the corners of his eyes, like he’s about to shatter. Infuriating that Felix can’t find the heart to drive him away. 

Sylvain’s question is clear in the confused raise of an eyebrow as Felix stops in front of a graveyard. 

“Well. This is it.” Felix snipes back toward Sylvain. 

“...Uh. Should I have brought flowers?” Sylvain says uncertainly at the gates. Clearly this isn’t what he was expecting. And honestly, what _ was _ he expecting, that he felt the need to follow Felix halfway across the city?

“_No_, you shouldn’t have - “ Felix cuts himself off before he can launch into a series of insults at Sylvain’s expense. He wishes it wasn’t so hard to stop himself, that it wasn’t necessary to cut his own words short rather than wear down an already wounded friendship. And besides, Sylvain is trying. It would be easier if he weren’t trying. 

“It’s fine,” Felix says, calmer this time. “I didn’t think to bring anything.” 

The graveyard, so empty and green just weeks ago, is filled with gravemounds that aren’t quite freshly turned but that no one has had the time to replant with grass and creeping moss. They’re all scattered with the things mourners always bring to graves - flowers, child’s toys, food and coin and memories. The whole graveyard looks like a shrine. 

It should be hard to find his way. Felix was only here once, at night, after one of the longest days he can remember. But his feet lead him without pause to a grave like any other grave. There are, apparently, some things he doesn’t forget. 

There’s no corpse gazing lifeless from the grass. No quiet half-circle of patient mourners. No blood, no mud, just one more sad little patch of barren dirt, scattered with flowers, and a rough-engraved headstone. 

Felix squints at it. _ Alder Hurst, 1158-1185_. 

The name means nothing. He hadn’t asked the name of the dead man or his family. They hadn’t offered, or asked his. 

He should have brought flowers. He should have brought _ something_. 

There’s an awkward shuffling from beside Felix. He’d almost forgotten that Sylvain was still here. 

“Soooo, uh,” Sylvain breaks his promised silence as he tries to figure out what Felix is doing here. “Someone you know?”

“No.” Felix watches confusion flash across Sylvain’s grave before he relents. “I dug the grave. For his sister.” 

From the look on Sylvain’s face this clears up very little. “Did she just… ask you to dig a grave?” 

“I offered.” And Sylvain falls silent again, miraculously, leaving the rustle of wind through trees lining the courtyard and the soft footsteps of other mourners as the dominant sounds. There’s birdsong, somewhere above him. There’s the distant sound of someone crying. 

Felix should have brought flowers. Should have brought anything, really, to leave as a marker of mourning. Felix looks down at himself, considering gloves and swords and belt buckles. A dagger wouldn’t be an appropriate token, certainly. Would a handkerchief? A button, a buckle, a lock of hair? Or would anything from him be too tainted by the violence he’d wrought in this very battle? 

“I should have brought flowers,” he says, one hand clenching on a coat clasp hard enough to feel sharp pain even through his glove. 

Felix didn’t mean it as a request. Sylvain takes it as one anyway, rifling through his own pockets, turning up lint and stupid courting gifts and shards of metal, the detritus of life and war. He holds out a handful of things that seem less unsuitable - a wilted rose, a hairpin, a wrapped pastry, a smooth rock. 

This isn’t the first grave Felix has stood in front of. It isn’t the dozenth, isn’t the hundredth. He’s never left anything but the flowers provided at the funeral. His hand hovers over Sylvain’s offerings and finally settles on the pastry, an honest thing that wasn’t bought to be a thoughtless gift. He lays it at the headstone, among daisies and letters and folder paper hearts. It feels presumptuous, too much familiarity and too small a thing. It’s all he has. 

“What do people say at graves?” This time it is directed at Sylvain, who just shrugs. 

“I’ve never known. You’d think they’d teach us more about last rites and funerals, huh.” 

Felix nods. Knights deal in death more than anyone, except maybe clergy. “You would think that.” 

There’s silence again. Felix stares at the grave, and the grass where the corpse lay while he dug, and at the meagre offering that isn’t even his. He runs a thumb over his palm, where his blisters from the shovel have already healed. 

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain says once the shadows of the trees have started to lengthen. 

Felix grunts his permission for Sylvain to continue. 

“Why this one?” 

There are always a dozen answers floating under his tongue, demanding to be chosen. _ Because fuck you, that’s why;_ _because his sister didn’t cry;_ _because every soldier should dig a grave._

The words that finally escape aren’t what he meant to say. He meant to bury them beneath another pile of things that pass for truth. He meant to deliver half-sincerity tied with an insult, like so many other things he says to Sylvain. 

But his voice doesn’t listen. 

“He was someone’s brother,” Felix says, and then can’t watch as Sylvain’s expression cracks into pain and pity. He stares at the name, Alder Hurst; it’s easier to face the dead man than Sylvain’s reaction. 

Which is, softly, “Oh.” and then “_ Felix _,” spoken so quiet Felix isn’t sure he was meant to hear. 

And then a hand closes gentle on his wrist. 

“Come on,” Sylvain says. He’s hidden away his pity again and Felix is painfully, hatefully grateful. “We should head to the camp.”

He isn’t wrong. Felix pulls his wrist away but doesn’t complain as Sylvain follows again, winding their way through the city with the rest of Faerghus’s stragglers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning to write two more chapters set in Enbarr but honestly I'm impatient to get on with the rest of the fic. This thing has an outline now. There are plot beats I need to fuckin get to that aren't primarily about death. 
> 
> The next chapter is going to be a little lighter! Like, not completely devoid of angst because of the whole premise of this thing, but there will be levity. Humor. Group interactions that aren't interrupted by death announcements. There's a long way back to Faerghus and the blue lions are absolutely going to hang out around a campfire and talk, regardless of whether that makes any practical sense.


	6. Campfire Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy this break from the angst. The gang has a relaxing evening on their way back to Faerghus. Mercedes tells a story. Felix has at least one stupid argument.

With all the traveling they've done since the war began, harried and panicked and jumping from battlefield to battlefield, always using stealth and speed to their fullest ability, it’s been easy to forget how big Fodlan is. 

So when Dimitri reminds them that the journey back to Fhirdiad will take three weeks of marching, Felix has to fight the urge to stab someone. 

“And that’s if we don’t rest at Garreg Mach, correct?” Mercedes asks.

“Correct,” Dimitri responds. “I do realize that many of you could make the journey more quickly on your own, but I'd consider it a personal favor if you would stay with the army.”

His eyes linger where Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid are standing in a little cluster. 

“Of course, Your Highness.” Ingrid says, always so eager to follow Dimitri’s orders. Sylvain shrugs agreeably and Felix says nothing. It hardly matters to him what the boar would like, but staying together seems easiest. Besides, he and Sylvain customarily take the last leg of the journey to the northmost edge of Faerghus together. 

“Now,” Dimitri says, and clears his throat awkwardly. The uncertain sound clashes so badly with the image of the huge man, tall and broad-shouldered and still dressed in scarred armor with hair he hasn’t bothered to cut. Felix tries to see his childhood friend, and tries to see the boar, and can’t quite find either in this awkward man who’s grown so comfortable with command. 

“I wanted to ask the group of you about our travel plans. As friends, not as your king. We’ll be passing by Garreg Mach - personally I’d prefer to rest there for a few days, though I realize it will slow our journey.”

There’s a murmur of agreement. No none objects to stopping and seeing their professor.

Felix still isn’t sure why the prince - king ?- is only just working out travel details. They should have been finalized before they marched away from Enbarr. Perhaps he assumed that everyone would be in a better frame of mind once they left the city. Perhaps he thought Felix would be less likely to object once they’d built up some momentum in their march. 

And he’s right. Despite all his grumbling Felix is reluctant to disagree when Ashe and Annette look so enthusiastic, and when Dimitri might gain any sense of closure from speaking to their old professor. 

* * *

It’s ten days of campfires and tents before they reach Garreg Mach. The eight of them stick together - out of habit, Felix tells himself, trying to begrudge their presence. But he finds himself lingering by a shared campfire all the same. 

There’s a perfectly serviceable cooking rotation that supplies the camp with basic travelling fare, underseasoned stew, salted meat, hard bread. Felix’s campfire turns into a cooking club anyway, half the blue lions swapping tips and recipes. 

“We should go camping more often, Mercie!” Annette’s saying as she sprinkles honey and cinnamon over halved pears, wraps them into neat little foil packets, and leaves them gently in the coals. 

“I think I agree!” Mercedes sits back from the activity for once, letting the others to the bulk of the cooking. “I’d forgotten how relaxing it can be, when we aren’t fearing a battle at the end.” 

Dedue breaks his silence for once and looks up from where he’s caramelizing onions over the fire while Ashe chops up sausage and folds seasoned potatoes into little packets. “Excursions like this seem good for morale. His Highness enjoys them.” He nods over to where Dimitri sits on his haunches awkwardly by the edge of the fire, fidgeting as he copes with having nothing to do.

“I could not ask all of you to neglect your duties just to indulge my nostalgia,” Dimitri says, polished-prince mask firmly in place. 

Felix could call him on it, nearly does confront him for the hundredth time about how his masks will destroy him one day, but Ashe is smiling unselfconscious and Annette is humming to herself and he can’t. 

“Don’t worry, we won’t indulge you,” is all he says, instead of any deeper accusation. Dimitri blinks and meets his eyes, smiling in something like gratitude before Felix can turn his gaze to the fire instead. 

“Felix! Of course we’d love to join you, Your Highness. Felix will come too,” Ingrid says beside him. 

“Don’t volunteer me! No I won’t.” Felix snaps back reflexively. 

“Ugh, if you’re going to be the duke shouldn’t you at least try to get along with the king?” 

Felix’s eyes narrow. If Ingrid wants to turn this into another stupid argument, so be it. “Advisers don’t usually have sleepovers. And we _ are _ getting along.” 

“What about any of this possibly looks like ‘getting along’?” Ingrid makes exaggerated little air quotes. 

“I haven’t stabbed him yet.” 

“That’s not what I meant -” but Ingrid cuts off with a shocked gasp when Felix lunges forward and steals one of the sweet rolls she’s been munching on. “Give that back!”

She has three more. She’ll survive. Felix takes a bite and blocks Ingrid’s punch, grimacing at the cloying sweetness of the icing. 

“You don’t even _ like _ sweets, you asshole!” It’s easy enough to dodge the next punch and the knee to his gut, but eventually Ingrid gets a hold of his arm and twists until he hands back the half-eaten pastry.

“You have three more! That was a - don’t you think that was an overreaction?” Felix addresses the fire. There’s a lot of awkward indecisive noises as everyone avoids taking sides in one more argument between the childhood best friend squad.

Dimitri speaks up, chuckling a little. “I believe Mercedes will always be willing to make more baked goods, Ingrid.” 

“Come on, you’re taking his side?” Ingrid shoves Felix. 

“I didn’t ask for _ your _ support. I can change my mind about stabbing you.” Felix says at the same time and shoves Ingrid back. 

Everyone is laughing. 

“It’s sort of nice that you haven’t grown out of arguing,” Ashe says. “I guess some things never change.” 

Mercedes hums her agreement and even Dedue gives a little chuckle. “Yes. It’s familiar,” he says. 

“All four of you seem so much happier than you have since the war began,” Mercedes says in her unassuming voice. There’s the usual pause as everyone stops to work out the implications of that one. 

Ingrid says “Oh, come on,” at the same time Felix snaps “what is that supposed to mean?”, apparently both reaching the same conclusion about Mercedes’s quasi-compliment. 

“Geez, Felix, can’t you take a compliment?” Annette smiles over at him, and there’s no way she honestly thinks that was a compliment. 

“Means you’re argumentative little shits when you’re relaxed,” a cheerful voice says before heavy arms drape over Felix and Ingrid’s shoulders. Sylvain sits down between them. 

“You are too, Sylvain!” Felix snaps.

“Felix brings out the worst in me,” Ingrid says primly.

“So stop spending so much time with someone who _ brings out the worst in you_.” 

“Awww, Felix,” Sylvain butts in, “if we all followed that advice you wouldn’t have _any _friends.” 

Felix elbows him. “Where have you been, anyway?” 

“You know, just joining a few victory celebrations.” Sylvain gives a suggestive little waggle of his eyebrows. “Wasn’t really feeling them though, and you guys have better food.” 

“You mean we’re your dear friends who you wanted to celebrate with,” Ingrid hisses. 

“I mean, yes, but to completely fair all those other people also just fought a war with me. It’s really a bonding experience. Like, on a large scale.”

Felix and Ingrid make identical scoffing sounds and then glare at each other across Sylvain. There’s an awkward silence as the rest of the campfire is reluctant to break into their conversation. 

It occurs to Felix that their arguments turned into a spectator sport at some point, which is completely unacceptable. He scowls into the silence. 

“I really envy you guys, having your closest friends by your sides through all of this.” Ashe actually blushes as he says that ridiculous bit of semtimentality, and Felix wishes it was easier to be mad at him. 

“It’s deeply comforting, and I'm thankful everyday that we’ve had the chance to live our lives in such closeness,” Dimitri says from across the fire. 

Felix’s snapped _ they’re more trouble than they’re worth _ is strangled in his throat by ten years of fearful, hated devotion. Dimitri smiles, just at him. Felix looks away and retreats from the conversation, tense and brooding at Sylvain’s side. It’s too easy to see Dimitri's smile and then get stuck in a loop of all the things he might have done to return Dimitri to himself sooner. He gave so many speeches about leaving the dead behind and still the thing that eventually helped was more of his family’s blood spilled. Hiding behind that thought is a fear he hasn’t let himself think until right now, in this circle of light. Would Dimitri have returned to himself, if it had been Felix? How much could have been circumvented by one Fraldarius death just a few months earlier? Dimitri is right there, smiling like he understands. Felix could disturb their rare peace, drag him away from the campfire, and start clearing the air. But apparently Felix is a coward, so he lets Sylvain’s arm rest heavy on his shoulders and stays. 

Soon enough Sylvain is passing around a bottle of some foul liquor he got from who knows where. It’s too strong and it burns in Felix’s throat but it eases the sharp edges of the world until he can focus on laughter and conversation, on the fire where Mercedes is being coaxed into telling one of her famous stories. 

“We are camped in an awfully dark forest. Are you sure you won’t be too scared?” As if Mercedes doesn’t love terrifying people. It’s such a contrast with her easy serenity. 

“I enjoy your stories,” Dimitri says. 

“Yeah, Mercie! And I bet you can’t scare us!” Annette chimes in. 

Ashe looks a little nervous. “I believe I can defend you from any ghosts,” Dedue says to him, calm as anything. 

“Terrify them, Mercedes! Don’t hold back.” Sylvain cheers. “Give the kids nightmares!” Ingrid swats his arm. Felix feels his own scowl soften. 

“Make it gruesome,” Felix says, just to see Annette shoot her fiercest glare his way. 

Mercedes giggles. “Well, since you all asked so nicely, how can I refuse? Please, get comfortable. I need a minute to think.” 

Felix retrieves a packet of roast sausage and potatoes to munch on and takes another swig of the awful booze. Sylvain apparently interprets ‘get comfortable’ as ‘cuddle with your childhood friends’, the arm draped over Felix’s shoulders pulling him a little closer. Felix pretends not to notice. 

Around the fire everyone does the same, grabbing food and mover closer to a sort of comfort. Ashe and Dedue flank Dimitri; Annette curls up against Mercedes. 

* * *

“It was two hundred years ago today, in this very forest,” Mercedes says, voice going high and quavery. 

_ According to legend, once there was a beautiful noble child. Nothing could contain him; he spent every waking moment roaming the woods, until his family only saw them at mealtimes. The child’s parents wanted to give him as much freedom as possible but they were worried that one day he would never return. On his tenth birthday the child had grown uncontrollable and his parents, the lord and lady, decided that something must be done. _

_ So at breakfast that day his parents said “Child, wonderful child, you are our pride and joy. You are both of our hearts. Your connection to nature is a gift, but we fear that you will never grow old enough to use it properly. We fear that you will die in the dark and treacherous woods, and your gifts will die with you, and our hearts will turn to ash.” _

_ But the child only scoffed. “The woods are not treacherous; they are kind. There is only treachery in my forest if you bring it with you.” _

_ And his parents frowned, because his words were both wise and foolish beyond his years, and they did not know what to do. Their child spent the next year roaming free, and the next. Every night his mother watched and waited and lit a lantern in his bedroom window until he returned safe and sound; every morning his father wept and wished him well as he walked into the forest. Until one night, when the child was twelve, he did not return. _

_ His family kept vigil day and night. They paid hunters to track the boy. They paid mages to summon him home. The falconer sent all the wisest birds to look for him, but nothing worked. And one day his parents sat up, and looked at each other, and both suspected that their child was dead. _

Annette is scowling up at Mercedes, probably about to protest that _ this isn’t a ghost story at all, Mercie!_. Dimitri looks entranced, not that Felix would ever admit to watching his expression. Sylvain shifts restlessly against him. Ashe is already looking nervously at the woods around them, even though literally nothing scary has happened. 

_ And that night, just as the family began mourning, a week before his thirteenth birthday, the child returned. _

_ “Where have you been?” the parents asked, but the child could give no answer save that he had been speaking to the beasts and the rivers. _

_ “The birds described all the places in the world,” the child said. “The rivers showed me the sources of life. The wind told me its secrets."_

_ And his mother and father were proud, because the wind and river and beasts speak only to the brightest and kindest. And they were terrified, because the child was still, after all, a child. They knew that if he died their hearts would die with him, and they decided that something must be done. _

_ So they said to their son, “One day you will return to the forests and the butterflies will teach you to float on the air and the wolves will teach you their song and you will listen to the slow sound of growing trees. But you must grow up among us, my son. You must live to earn your wisdom; you must be a human first and a forest second.” _

_ The child was confined to their castle and no longer allowed to roam as he would. He had only the best of food and clothes and tutors. He was taught politics and sums and all the other things the nobles prided their children on. _

_ He chafed at the confinement, but the boy was as clever as he was wise. He bided his time for three years, until on his sixteenth birthday news of a ravenous beast reached the castle. The beast had roamed the land for longer than memory can describe, but this forest was far from its usual hunting ground. _

_ The child presented himself to his parents, because he was sure this was his time to return to the woods. _

_ “Mother, father, the beast in the forest is fierce and frightful, but the trees and the wind and the rivers do not fear him. The birds do not avoid him, and the beasts respect him. I do not fear him either; let me go and speak to him and convince him to leave our people alive.” _

_ His parents were reluctant and horrified, but the child would not be dissuaded. “Mother, father,” he said, “you kept me here so I would have time to learn wisdom. I am three years older now; I know all the things that humans value as well as the wisdom of the winds. Why do I have these gifts, if not to use them now?” _

_ His parents wept but admitted the truth of what he said, and they were proud and hopeful and terrified. “Perhaps this is what he was born for,” the mother said to the father. And they agreed to send him into the forest with only a bundle of food and their love for him. “Remember,” the father cried as his son walked from home for the first time in three years, “you must return, my son, or our hearts will die with yours.” _

_ The child wasn’t afraid. The birds sang to him of what the beast had done, and the river gurgled to him of where the beast had been, and the wind whispered its secrets. And the child intended to speak to the beast and convince it away from its path, but he ignored his father's last words. He never intended to return to his parents, for though they loved him they had also confined him. _

_ The beast sat in a clearing deep in the woods, as though waiting only for him, and still the child had no fear, for he knew the only treachery in the forest is the treachery you bring. _

_ “Sir beast,” he said, “you have eaten our cows and mauled the villagers. The people here fear you and hate you. Won’t you return to the woods of your home?” _

_ The beast answered, not as a forest creature, but in a warped human voice. “I am feared and hated by all, and I have no home to return to.” _

_ The boy shivered, but did not back down. “I don’t fear you,” he said, although up close the beast was ancient and ugly and its hide held hundreds of rusted metal things that had failed to kill it. “And I am leaving this land. Shall we travel together and search for a place where we can both live in peace?” _

_ The beast’s laughter was an awful thing that echoed through the woods. The wind in the branches spoke a warning that the child did not hear. _

_ “How bold you are,” the beast spoke. “In a thousand years every person I've met feared me. You are no different.” _

_ And the boy quavered again, and did not hear the warning sent by the rushing of the river. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I will travel with you until you find a place you belong.” _

_ The beast didn’t answer until after his jaws snapped down on the boy and swallowed him in two gulps. Its roar filled the land, and at the castle the child’s parents screamed as well. _

_ “Our hearts,” they called, “our hearts!” Their hearts cracked and broke within them as the child died. Their bodies could not survive without hearts, but their spirits were weighed down and warped by the broken remains, and could not move on. _

_ Their ghosts are still trapped, in this forest, searching for their son. And the child’s spirit is bound to the beast. It follows along in its path of destruction, wailing, still trying to drive the beast away from each town it visits. _

* * *

There’s a sort of stunned silence after Mercedes finishes. Annette frowns thoughtful and perturbed where she leans against Mercedes. Dedue’s typically unreadable, Ashe’s eyes are wide with nervousness, and when Felix glances at Sylvain he looks uncharacteristically serious. 

“Uh, are you sure that was a ghost story?” says Sylvain, always the first to break any silence. 

“There were ghosts, although I must admit I’m not sure what to make of the tale,” Dimitri says polite as always. 

Mercedes shrugs. “Well, I suppose they can’t all be successes.” She giggles. “I really was trying to terrify you all, but it got away from me.” 

Ashe stares around with wide eyes. “None of you thought it was scary? The idea of those ghosts stuck here forever is pretty creepy.” He looks over at Mercedes, fearful. “That didn’t really happen, did it?” 

“Not exactly,” she says thoughtfully. “There are rumors about an ancient beast that roams Fodlan, and there was a noble family who died in mysterious circumstances near here a few centuries ago. Stories are always so much more convincing when you mix in a few real details, aren’t they?” 

“I suppose,” Ashe says, looking very much as though he wishes Mercedes had gone with something further removed from reality. 

Felix sighs. “Ghosts aren’t real,” he says to Ashe for maybe the twentieth time. “And if they are I’ll drive them away.” 

“Uh, how?” says Sylvain. 

“You can’t duel a ghost, Felix,” Ingrid says, like it’s a clarification he needs. 

“_Of course _I can’t duel a ghost, they aren’t real. But if they were stabbing one would probably drive it away.” And maybe he isn’t making sense, but it’s late and he’s a little drunk and the campfire is warm and comforting. 

Ingrid sighs. Sylvain starts chuckling, and Felix feels the rumble in his chest as much as he hears it. He glares. But the laughter spreads across the circle until even Dedue smiles and Ashe breaks out in relieved little laughs. 

Felix never liked being laughed at, but there’s relief in the air. Annette flops down with her head in Mercedes’s lap; Sylvain hands him a cup of wine even though he’s probably drunk enough. The campfire is warm and comfortable, but his tent is dark and lonely and the walk there is cold and long. 

So Felix says “I take it back, you can deal with the ghosts yourself” to Ashe, and stays, and lets himself be laughed at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next stop we're back to our regularly-scheduled pain with nostalgia and some emotional conversations at Garreg Mach. Byleth will finally be in this fic. I'm dreading it. 
> 
> This is a weird one, guys. I wrote most of it in a sleep-deprived haze at Newark airport. Anyway. Mercedes's story spontaneously wrote itself in half an hour and I still don't know what to think of it. It's the first fairytale/ghost story thing I've ever written, so I'm giving myself full points for effort. 
> 
> Group scenes are starting to feel less intimidating, I love Mercedes an unreasonable amount, and Blue Lions cooking club has a special place in my heart.
> 
> Feedback is great, comments are at least 40% of my motivation, and please picture me grinning at my phone for twenty minutes every time I get a kudos notification.


	7. Garreg Mach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a fairly gruesome description of a corpse, lots of angst, Felix's terrible relationship with his father, and more angst. You know, the usual. There's also an adorable cat.

Garreg Mach monastery never seems to change, Felix reflects as they near its gates. Even when it was filled with the rubble of siege and neglect and crawling with thieves it was the same place as always, a deceptively delicate fortress city placed at the center of the continent. 

During their academy days Archbishop Rhea often stood at the edge of the walls or on the monastery’s third floor, watching travelers come and go. 

There is no Archbishop Rhea watching them return. There never will be again. It’s an odd thought, discomforting Felix even though he’s never had much attachment to the church. She’d been a fixture of life in Fódlan for as long as he could remember.

Felix squints at the towers of the monastery as they enter the outer gates. The professor is probably watching them from above now, stern and unsmiling and breathing the tiniest sigh of relief to see them all still living. She always did fret too much about her students.

The rest of the group are also craning their necks upwards. All except Dimitri, who rides with his eyes faced determinedly forward, as though looking away from the road will invite the ghosts of war back in. 

* * *

The feast Byleth throws that first night is both less extravagant than an end-of-war celebration should be and far more costly than is practical, considering that the church spent so many of its own resources on the war. 

There’s the usual assortment of speeches about _loyalty_ and _the power of friendship_ and _the future we walk towards_ . The professor - the Archbishop - _Byleth_ steps out from the high table before the dessert course is served, far before someone so high-ranking should, by all rules of etiquette. Felix slinks out once the main course is over and everyone begins to mingle, before he can be cornered by the too-perceptive professor, but it’s hard not to smile at the thought of Byleth casually breaking every rule that an Archbishop customarily follows. 

* * *

Moonlight filters into the monastery as Felix leaves the hall. Garreg Mach’s walls are always pale and drab, but under the dark sky and silver moon they shimmer like a drowned city. 

The little hedged courtyard he steps into is quiet, except for one couple in the corner. They’re smiling and whispering to each other between kisses, presumably swearing to be together for always now that the war isn’t there to separate them. Someone kinder might find it unbearably sweet, but Felix just finds it unbearable. He glares pointedly until they awkwardly leave. 

Even the hedges look like ghosts of themselves in this light. Felix reaches out to pluck a branch, absently. It parts from the bush with a quiet snap and returns to its usual vibrant green when he holds it close to his eyes. 

Behind him voices carry and laughter echoes loud. Soon someone will round up enough musicians for an impromptu band and his friends will dance far into the night. 

The weight in his stomach isn't disgust or hatred or anything so straightforward. Felix was dragged to far too many feasts in the years before the officer’s academy - those disgusted him, those bright halls filled with decadent food, the merry fires in the hearth, the endless dancing. Those nobles celebrated only to celebrate, insulated from the harsh cold of Faerghus by power and riches and thick castle walls. 

This is different, the relieved celebration of people who barely believe they’ve reached an impossible end to a brutal war. His own friends laugh and dance inside. The courtyards and streets are filled with soldiers and staff drinking and trading tales and exclaiming about what they’ll do once they’re back home. 

And now that they’re removed, even by a month, from the slaughter of their final battle Felix can’t bring himself to hate it. It discomforts him, in a way that has nothing to do with blood on his hands or his fears about the king or the ignored memory of Sylvain kneeling beneath him. 

His friends all look happy, if not permanently then at least for tonight. No one leaves a war unwounded, Felix knows. But the hall is full of the smiles of people who have bound their wounds so thoroughly that they can celebrate without a care, for just one evening. And even if he enjoyed parties, even if the thought of dancing through the night was the least bit compelling, that could never be him. 

Hatred would be easier. 

Felix tries to avoid the people filling the halls and courtyards, but it’s impossible to avoid the crowds entirely as he paces the length of the monastery.

Everything and nothing is the same. A year of war hasn’t stopped Felix from expecting to run into other former students around every corner. The habits of five years ago are set insistently into his brain. It’s hard not to hear Leonie’s cheerful annoyance when he steps into the training grounds, and Dorothea’s laughter in the dining hall. His feet seem to pause without consulting him every time he walks by Bernadetta’s room. 

They’re regrets, not ghosts. It’s almost worse. 

The crowds pay no attention to him, but Felix wearies of winding his way through them long before they begin to disperse. He finally tires of revisiting his old haunts and finds his way to the centre of Garreg Mach, avoiding people as much as possible. The cramped back routes on the way to the third floor balcony are emptier, except for couples looking for privacy. 

The staircase to the second and third floors is much too close to the entrance hall, and Felix can hear music spilling through the closed doors. He pauses at the bottom of the stairs, where a little black cat with white socks is curled in the shadows. It leans forward to rub its head against his leg, purring. 

Felix checks over his shoulders for any other people lurking in the hallway, but the coast is clear. 

“Still being a nuisance, Nuisance?” he says, petting his favorite cat’s ears. Felix takes another careful look around the hallway before pulling out a dried fish from one of his inner pockets. Nuisance stretches up at it and pounces, managing to claw his hand open a little as she snatches it from Felix’s fingers. 

“Ow,” Felix says. “Maybe you’d have a better name if you didn’t do that all the time.” 

Nuisance just stares innocently up at him and meows. Felix takes out another fish and heads up the stairs, coaxing Nuisance after him. 

It’s a long climb to the top floor balcony. But with Byleth and Seteth at the feast, it's one of the few parts of the monastery bound to be virtually deserted. It’s a good place to think, with the dramatic view and bracing winds. It’s a good place to think about one thing in particular, because Felix can’t step into the graveyard without wanting to claw the breath from his lungs. But here on the balcony he had the last memory of his father that wasn’t filled with anger. It was nothing, not even a conversation, just an image of him talking to the professor and looking over the grounds. 

Felix sits carefully on the broad wall, leaning back against the raised part of the battlements. He pats the stone beside him and Nuisance jumps up, examines the little patch he gestured to, and steps imperiously onto his lap instead. The cat peers curiously over the edge of the wall. 

“I'm not going to catch you if you fall,” Felix tells Nuisance. 

The sounds of celebration are muted by distance and cold air. Somehow they insulate him from the noise better than castle walls ever seem to, or maybe the sounds of wind and the light of the stars just make everything seem further away. 

Felix lets himself sink back into the silence and the sound of Nuisance’s purring. The quiet fills his lungs and mind until he almost breathes easy, until he can almost see past the memory of his father solemnly contemplating the monastery. 

“I didn't care for him,” he says to Nuisance. “I don’t know _why_ I keep thinking about this. It’s not like he ever bothered to act like a father.” But Nuisance doesn’t seem to have an opinion. 

There’s a footfall at the entrance to the balcony. The steps are too light to be Sylvain or Dimitri. Felix controls his startled jump, careful not to disturb Nuisance, and looks reluctantly down the hall. 

The professor walks toward him, unreadable as always. 

“You’re supposed to be at the feast,” Felix snaps. 

Byleth shakes her head. “I wanted to greet all of my students. I’m not surprised you left early, but I was concerned when you weren’t at the training grounds.”

“And why would you be concerned? The war’s over. There’s nothing here to hurt me.” 

Byleth’s gaze sweeps between the broad stone of the balcony and Felix’s perch on the wall. She leans against the wall beside him and reaches out to pet Nuisance, who stretches, snagging claws on Felix’s coat. 

“The last time I found you here was just after Rodrigue died.” Byleth never was one to tiptoe around what she wanted to say. Most of the time it’s a trait Felix respects. Right now he wishes someone had bothered to teach her tact. 

“So?” Felix says, because fuck if he’s going to make this easy. 

Byleth stares at him, solemn and patient as ever. It’s even harder than usual to meet her eyes. 

“You haven’t visited his grave since the funeral.” 

“How would you know?” Felix snaps. She’s right. “Why would I.” He sweeps his hand over the monastery. “This is just the farthest I could get from the celebrations. Must you always look for an ulterior motive for everything?” 

Byleth takes a long time to answer, which means she’s almost certainly trying to pierce right to the heart of an issue. Felix braces himself. 

“I know what it’s like to lose a parent before you’ve had the chance to say everything you wanted. But I was there for my father’s final moments, and I had all of you to help me mourn.” 

Felix was expecting something like that. It still feels like an icicle through his heart. 

“You didn’t have any of that, Felix,” Byleth continues. “No final conversation, and no chance to mourn.” 

“Sure.” Felix bites back most of the bitter accusations he could make, because Byleth is still trying to be _kind_. “Why would that matter. I could have been standing right there and my old man’s final words still wouldn’t have been for me.” 

Byleth doesn't even deny it. “It isn’t about Rodrigue,” she says cautiously. “It’s about you. You never talked to anyone about all the things you wish you could say.” 

“There’s _nothing_ to talk about,” Felix forces out through his clenched jaw. What could Byleth possibly know, apart from a few conversations five years ago? “It would just be stringing gravestones around my neck. You met him. You know he wasn’t interested in understanding me. The only thing he would have said to me is ‘watch over Dimitri, even if it costs your life’.” Felix laughs, a sharp uncomfortable sound. “Then I’d have something to talk about.” He glares into Byleth’s steady gaze. “It’s better like this.” 

Byleth nods like she’s confirming something she already suspected. “So you won’t let me help you.” It’s as sad as she ever sounds. 

“There’s nothing to help, unless you’re talking about my sword form. I prefer your sparring to your conversation.”

“I’m here, if you ever change your mind,” Byleth says. She reaches over to scritch Nuisance’s ears. “At least he talks to you,” she says to the cat. Nuisance meows. 

Felix waits until Byleth’s footsteps fade away. “Traitor,” he says to Nuisance, who stares up as innocently as ever. 

* * *

This is why Felix didn’t hear his father’s last words:

Felix was on the other side of Gronder Field when his old man took a dagger for Dimitri. 

He was on the other side of Gronder Field, out of his usual position at the frontlines, because the battle was nearly over. It seemed safe enough to backtrack to the hill at the center, where Edelgard had stationed her archer. He was rushing, taking a risk he would normally scoff at, because every proper healer he could think of was already occupied keeping Kingdom soldiers from bleeding out into the grass. 

Felix was rushing because Berandetta’s screams had stopped minutes ago. They’d been the backdrop to the battlefield since Edelgard lit the archer’s hill on fire gods knew how long ago. He’d barely even noticed until they faded. 

It’s an imprecise art, calculating what he was doing at the exact moment of his father’s death. But Felix has dreamed through the whole thing over and over. Regardless of whether it’s correct his truest memory is that, while Rodrigue was spending all of his final breaths on Dimitri, Felix had just finished dragging what remained of Bernadetta from the still-smoldering hill she died on. 

Felix’s father died eyes open, looking at the man he considered more than a son, sad but hopeful. Bernadetta died abandoned by her own army. Even her body was recovered by an enemy, a former classmate who’d always done a poor job of being her friend.

By the time a messenger finds Felix he’s already spent ten minutes laying Bernadetta out in the grass. It’s delicate work. The flesh of her left hand is melted around the grip of her bow. The clasp of her cloak is fused into her sternum. Smoke keeps rising from the body long after the actual fire is extinguished. The mingled fumes of scorched metal, burned hair, cracked leather, and melted fat make his eyes stream with tears. It’s work he’s ill-suited to, but as usual no one else stepped forward to take care of it.

He ignores the messenger’s first few attempts at getting his attention. “What,” Felix finally snaps when it becomes clear that the messenger isn’t going to leave. 

“It’s Duke Fraldarius,” the messenger stammers out. “He was stabbed while protecting His Highness.” 

“My old man’s survived worse,” Felix says, not looking up from where he’s gingerly trying to separate Bernadetta’s hairclip from her scalp. “I’m sure he feels honored to take a dagger for the boar.”

The messenger takes a nervous breath. “I’m afraid that he’s dead.”

“What?” Felix grudgingly stands up from Bernadetta’s body. “How long ago was this?” 

“Perhaps twenty minutes,” the messenger answers. “I’m sorry for the wait. It was difficult to find you.” 

Felix runs off without answering, leaving Bernadetta alone in the field.

It’s easy to find. There’s a cluster of people standing near the frontlines, talking anxiously. They all look away guiltily as he approaches. 

His father’s body lies in a laughably small pool of blood, a single sword jutting out of his chest. It must have been poisoned. Dimitri kneels over him, weeping as a son should weep for his father. 

“I’m sorry,” Byleth says when she notices his arrival. “I wasn’t fast enough to save him.” 

Felix doesn’t respond, just steps closer to the body. Anger and grief roil in the hollow of his chest. When Dimitri looks up, expression clear and guilty and human once more, anger wins. 

“So that’s how it is,” Felix says, tight and pained. “We traded his life for yours.” 

“Felix,” Dimitri says, in one short, anguished breath. “I’m sorry.” 

But there’s nothing to say, nothing that can be expressed through the sudden tightening of his lungs. Felix takes one more look at the body of his father and leaves. 

Behind him Byleth whispers “Give him space.” No one follows. 

Bernadetta’s body is already gone when Felix returns. 

His father’s funeral service at the monastery is a perfunctory thing, accompanied by a hurried benediction and whatever flowers Byleth could scrounge up. They’re mismatched, roses and lilies and violets mingled in hasty bouquets. None of them are the blues of Faerghus and House Fraldarius. 

Felix attends only reluctantly, standing in the back of the crowd of mourners. He refused all invitations to give a eulogy. Dimitri stands closest to the grave, holding a solitary lily in one hand and clearly fighting back tears. 

It feels like there’s no sadness left in Felix. It feels like all the emotions he should be having are converted directly into pain, pressing down on his beating heart until it’s a struggle to breathe or stand straight around the hurt in his chest. 

It’s easier to think of Bernadetta than to look at his father’s shrouded body as it’s lowered into the grave, easier to picture the flesh bubbling under her skin than to picture the pool of blood his father died in. She was probably returned to House Varley for burial, he supposes. It seems so backwards, that Bernadetta was returned to the father she feared rather than buried here, in the only place where she ever felt safe. 

Felix’s composure finally breaks, the twisting in his chest turning into quiet sobs that he chokes the sound from. If anyone notices they don’t dare say anything. He stands rigid in the shadows and stares straight ahead, toward the grave, as shovelfuls of dirt slowly cover the body. 

The mourners filter out one by one. There’s already another battle to plan for, after all. He waits until the gravediggers have finished their work, until it’s just him watching Dimitri, and Byleth watching both of them. Dimitri kneels at the foot of the grave and places the lily he’s been holding on the loose dirt. He stays for a long time, speaking words that Felix is glad he can’t hear. 

When he finally stands to leave Felix stays where he is, so used to the boar that he doesn’t expect Dimitri to notice him. But Dimitri’s brow creases in all-too-human pain when he sees Felix lingering at the edge of the graveyard. 

“Felix,” he says, rushing up before Felix has the presence of mind to make a quick escape. “I know there’s nothing I could say to make up for the losses you have suffered for my sake.” In only days of clarity he’s already recovered enough to speak like a prince. 

“So don’t say anything, boar,” Felix says. 

Dimitri doesn’t listen. “It should have been you at his side.” He’s pathetic in his sincerity. 

“Why? So you could hear the exact same speech second-hand?” Felix sneers. “My old man’s last words would still have been for you.” 

Dimitri recoils, as if he was expecting a tearful reunion instead of anger. 

“My father already spent his whole life on you, even before he decided to take that blow. Try not to waste his death.” Felix leaves, pushing past Dimitri, wishing that he’d avoided the funeral entirely. He doesn’t stop to place a flower on the grave. 

It’s hours of hacking apart training dummies and ignoring his classmates’ worried interruptions before Felix returns to his room. Despite his exhaustion he doubts he has any hope of sleeping, but at least no one will disturb him there. 

Felix goes to open the door and finds that it’s already unlocked. He draws his sword as silently as possible and pushes the door open all at once, ready to surprise any intruder. But it’s only Sylvain, sitting awkwardly at the side of Felix’s bed and not looking at all startled to see Felix leveling a sword at him.

“Yeah, I figured you’d try to stab me,” Sylvain says, looking far less perturbed than someone with a sword pointed inches away from his throat should. “How about you put that away? I don’t think the professor could stand another funeral right now.” 

“Why are _you_ here?” Felix asks, dripping disdain, and reluctantly sheathes the sword. 

“Uh, concern? You just buried your dad, Felix,” Sylvain says. 

“Don’t bother,” Felix replies, still standing just inside the door. “Everyone else already spent all afternoon showing how concerned they are. Mostly by interrupting my training.” 

“Yeah, I should have told them that was a stupid idea,” Sylvain says. 

“And breaking into my room isn’t a stupid idea?” 

“Well,” Sylvain shrugs, “you haven’t stormed off yet, so it still seems like a pretty good plan.” The silence stretches out while they watch each other.

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain finally says.

“What.”

“Remember how you stayed with me after I killed Miklan?” Sylvain asks. 

It feels like much longer than five years ago. “I remember,” Felix says. “He deserved it.” 

“Oh, yeah, he was the worst possible brother. You know, I started counting up all the ways he tried to murder me once? I couldn’t finish it. Like, I only got up to age twelve and it was just way too depressing. Still felt weird when he died, though.” 

“I know what you’re trying to do, Sylvain,” Felix says, soft and resigned. 

“Great, saves me trying to explain it. C’mon, Felix,” Sylvain says, looking up at him with the saddest possible smile. “I’m not gonna try to get you to talk about your feelings like all those other assholes. Just don’t force yourself to be completely alone.” 

Felix doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t protest when Sylvain flops back onto the bed and pats the space between him and the wall. He tosses his swordbelt to the floor, kicks off the more uncomfortable parts of his outfit, and reluctantly clambers over Sylvain to slip under the blankets. 

“I don’t think I ever thanked you,” Sylvain says once Felix is settled. “You know, for after Miklan.” 

“You didn’t have to, idiot,” Felix hisses back. 

“Maybe not, but you let me hug you like a teddy bear for a week. You wanna let me return the favor?” 

“You’re already here, aren’t you?” Felix says, and kicks him under the covers for good measure. 

“Ow. You’re brutal,” Sylvain says, but he’s smiling. “C’mon, what’s most comfortable?” He opens his arms wide and inviting. 

Felix glares. But then he settles closer to Sylvain anyway, curling up until his head is pressed into the hollow of Sylvain’s neck and their legs are twined together. “You won’t tell anyone about this.” 

“Yeah, yeah, if anyone asks you made me sleep on the floor,” Sylvain says. His hand rubs soothingly between Felix’s shoulder blades. “Let’s get some sleep, Felix.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nuisance got her name because Felix tripped over her at the training grounds like five times.
> 
> Did you know that after Gronder Field you can get an advice box note where Felix says he hit his father once and wishes he could go back and apologize? I always figured it was just after Glenn's death. I mean, now you know, please join me in this suffering. 
> 
> It's very difficult to figure out a good voice for a character that doesn't really have dialogue. We know a lot about Byleth, and there's a fairly consistent personality there, but how do they talk? What are Byleth's speech patterns? Like, Felix's speech has a bunch of characteristics that make him sound pretty distinct, like how he almost never addresses other people by name. Dimitri is Extremely Proper. Ingrid is always trying very hard to sound reasonable. What the fuck does Byleth's speech actually sound like?
> 
> I'm still baffled that so many people are reading this, your comments give me life, and I love all sorts of feedback.


	8. Flayn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one. It contains a normal amount of angst and zero corpses.

It’s the dead of night when Felix returns to his cramped room. It does not befit a duke who lead an army to victory. It’s hard to believe that only weeks ago he was living here, a dorm room in the midst of war.

It already feels like it belongs to a stranger. The things scattered on the floor and shelves are unmistakably his, daggers and clothes and stacks of half-read books. There are treatises on strategy and supply lines that he read the first chapters of and gave up on in disgust at the stupidity of the author or in disdain at the simplicity of the information. Buried somewhere in the pile are books of fairy tales and legends, pushed on him by Ingrid and Ashe. They suffered the same fate, over the years, half-read and then discarded from frustration when he finds them too full of the ideals he already chokes on every day. They seem even more wasteful than usual. Every hour he’d wasted reading useless books on tactics was an hour he should have spent learning to manage a territory.

But the books still sit on his shelves. He’s never had the heart to get rid of them entirely. 

Nuisance follows him in as he stands there, surveying the room like he’s seeing it for the first time through tired, bloodshot eyes. He closes the door behind the cat.

“So you’re not planning to leave me alone either,” he tells Nuisance, nudging her with his left boot. Nuisance pounces on it, claws extended, leaving gashes in the leather. Oh, well. He needs to replace those anyway.

It helps, somehow. The room feels like his own now that there’s a grumpy cat attacking him and then losing interest, leaping light onto shelves full of books that ought to belong to someone else and rubbing against them, batting a paw playfully against a vase of dead flowers the professor pressed on him before their final battle.

The professor was always giving gifts to her students. Like she was desperate to let them all know that she thought of her students constantly, as if any of them could have doubted. He looks closer at the wilted stems; they’re daffodils, the bright gold and green long since drained into dead grey.

Felix grabs Nuisance by the scruff of her neck before she can take a bite out of one of the petals. “Those are bad for you,” he tells her sternly. “I’m going to put them somewhere you won’t poison yourself on them.” He picks up the whole vase and sweeps the fallen petals into it, heads out of the room, leaving Nuisance by herself. All of the things he cares about are too hardy to be destroyed by an annoyed cat.

There’s always a bin of compost material out by the greenhouse. Felix hates how it smells, all moist earth and creeping rot. But it’s the proper place for a dead plant, and the professor and Ashe always exclaim over the quality of the Garreg Mach compost heap. So he wrinkles his nose and steps up to it anyway, emptying out the vase and then slamming the door shut before the full force of the decay can assault him.

The crowds around the monastery are finally beginning to disappear, revelers wearing themselves out and retreating back to their own beds. Felix still wasn’t planning to linger here, or anywhere. The professor had already taken a crack at analyzing him this evening, and he wasn’t keen to give anyone else the chance. He leaves the greenhouse, ready to climb directly back to the second floor of the dorm. Something makes him pause. 

The moon is still bright overhead. He’s not one for admiring landscapes, really, but the glitter of the moon in the pond’s silvered water is… pretty. Someone who spent more of their life learning to see beauty would have a better word for it. The war’s over; perhaps there’s time to appreciate the quiet of a moonlit night, if only for a minute.

“Felix! I did not see you at the celebration,” Flayn’s overly-polite voice says behind him. Felix nearly throws the empty vase, but he holds himself back. Flayn always moved more quietly than seemed appropriate or possible, for such an exuberant person. 

The moment of watching the water breaks. He’s back in his own head, a person who has no use for any beauty other than the elegance of a finely-crafted blade, the grace of a thrust perfectly positioned to end a life.

“I left early. So I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone,” he says meaningfully, and turns his back on the pond.

“So I assumed,” Flayn says brightly. “Nevertheless, I wish to speak with you.” 

“About _ what_,” he says, exasperated by her eternal ability to ignore the clearest hints. “Leave me alone. Go find someone to celebrate with.” 

“I believe that I have found someone to celebrate with, if you’ll allow me a few minutes.” Flayn beams up at him, always so hopeful. It should be easy to drive her off and return to his room, where there’s silence and a cat that only demands moments of attention and the occasional fish. 

Which, now that he thinks, isn’t a bad description of Flayn herself. Felix finds himself smirking at the thought. “Fine,” he says. “I suppose I can spare a few minutes.” 

“Excellent,” Flayn says. She steps up to the pond beside him and looks out over the water. “Is the moon not beautiful tonight? Do you often stop and notice such things, Felix?” 

“I was admiring it, before you interrupted,” he admits. He doesn’t turn back around. Flayn gazes over the water, delighted at the simplest things. Felix stares out at the darkness of the monastery. 

“I did not realize! In that case I apologize for my interruption, but I am so delighted to hear that you noticed it at all.” 

“What exactly do you want,” Felix says. 

“The war is over! Is it not enough that I wish to ask my friend how he feels about that?”

He shrugs. “The war’s over, sure. Now we’ll have to deal with the politics of it all. Fighting would be easier.”

“Certainly not.” Flayn grabs his arm and tugs him back to face the water; Felix lets her. “Or perhaps it would be simpler, but you can’t say more fighting would be better.” 

Felix stares back out over the pond; it’s that or look at Flayn’s expression. “Fighting wouldn’t be better for the world. Just for me.” 

It’s true and it isn’t; his sword arm has grown heavy after five years of killing. His dreams are full of the screams of the wounded, when he dreams at all. But his home is filled with overgrown fields and no one to tend them, and Felix never learned politics, not beyond the basics that every noble grows up knowing. He wasn’t taught how to spend his days dealmaking, writing letters to far-off territories that only care about how much advantage they can pull out of him, sitting useless and warm in a castle surrounded by frost. 

Flayn frowns, confused and displeased. “Whatever can you mean? Even you seemed enthusiastic about the idea of a world where you need not chop up people.” 

Right. Flayn was raised… wherever she was raised. The intricacies of nobility are lost on her. “I was a second son. I wasn’t supposed to manage a territory, just defend it. My brother,” the words stick in his throat, “was supposed to be the lord. I was just taught to be a glorified soldier.” 

This frown he can identify. It’s sympathy touching Flayn’s eyes. He hates it. 

“I’ll be going now,” he says, before she can say anything that betrays her pity. Felix heads back towards the dorms.

But Flayn is stubborn and naive and idealistic and, very occasionally, wise beyond her years. She always has been. So he pauses when she calls out “Wait!”, even if he doesn’t turn around. 

“You have always quickly become accomplished at anything you’ve attempted. This will be no different.” Her confidence seems impossibly genuine.

“What do you know?” It’s meant to be a dismissal, a quick end to a conversation that he shouldn’t have started. Flayn takes it as a serious question, as she so often does. 

“I know far more than you about such things,” she says, affronted. “I believe I’m a far better judge of your ability off the battlefield than you are, and I’m quite annoyed that you’re so quick to choose _ killing _ over _ learning a skill_.” There’s a little thud behind him; she probably actually stomped her foot. “Do not make me throw you into the pond. You will admit that you are relieved the war is over or I _ will _ warp you into the pond with the monster fish.” 

Felix turns around. Flayn is glaring at him with her arms crossed, but she always looks like she’s about to cry when she’s angry. 

“You’re overestimating me,” he says, too quiet for anyone but the two of them to hear. “I’m relieved that the others won’t have to fight as much. And I was admiring how the moonlight shines on the water. Will _ that _do?”

Flayn melts back into happiness as quickly as she shifted to anger, mercurial as ever. “That will do quite nicely, for a start,” she says. “Next time you visit I do hope you’ll be able to admit the rest.” 

Felix scoffs, but it’s a soft, tired sound in the night. “Are you done now?” 

“Yes. Feel free to continue skulking around the monastery all on your own.” Flayn gives a cheery little wave as he heads back to the upstairs dorm rooms. 

“Sorry, Nuisance,” he says, after he’s entered his room and shut the night out. “That took longer than I meant it to.” 

An old shirt he left on the floor has a few new holes in it. The rug is bunched up in one corner of the room. Nuisance herself is curled up in the exact center of the bed, purring softly. Felix sets the now-empty vase back on the shelf he got it from and crosses his arms, glaring at the cat. 

“You have a terrible talent of taking up the entire mattress even though you’re about the size of a fish,” he informs Nuisance. “It’s inconsiderate.” 

Nuisance wakes up just enough to yawn at him when he pushes her gently over to one side, and when Felix gets into bed she immediately drapes herself over his chest, claws leaving little pinpricks of discomfort. 

“Why did I let you in here?” Felix wonders aloud. But Nuisance is already curled up and purring again. “Fine,” he says to the cat, and goes to sleep himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally part of one very long chapter but I decided to split it up into smaller chunks. "Felix and Flayn get an extra support conversation" sure wasn't in my outline for this fic but you know what, sometimes characters show up and demand to fucking talk. And Flayn's fun to write.


	9. Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's mostly pining. Warning for some descriptions of butchering a deer.

Icy winds greet them on the way north through Faerghus. The nights grow colder, the breezes turn into howling gales. Snow falls, on and off, but the sky is always the same shade of desaturated grey. It’s home. 

Felix’s friends leave one by one. 

Annette and Mercedes wave goodbye early on, leaving to look for people to help. Dimitri solemnly thanks them as they reach Fhirdiad and offers them guest rooms in the royal palace. Ashe accepts, but Ingrid says her goodbyes and flies off toward Galatea. She’ll arrive by morning, traveling by pegasus as she does.

Felix just shakes his head and gives a halfhearted wave as he leaves without even setting foot within the walls of the city. He’s had enough of sleeping in other people’s castles, and he doesn’t know what words he could possibly say to Dimitri - _ try not to go berserk and murder everyone? It’s cool that you’re exploring the joys of sanity but I don’t trust you with anything? Send a messenger if you think you’re slipping? _ \- and it is, in the end, too painful to do anything but leave. It’s childish, Felix knows, but he can't bring himself to throw himself on Dimitri’s hospitality and gratitude. Every time Dimitri thanks him it brings back too many things he’d rather forget - his bloody smile at the rebellion so long ago, Glenn’s mangled armor, the lives and deaths of all his family. He’ll walk with the combined Fraldarius and Gautier forces and camp by the side of the main road. 

He doesn’t expect Sylvain to follow without even an argument. And when they do stop a few hours later, near the gates of a group of buildings that barely qualifies as a town, he expects Sylvain to vanish by himself for the rest of the night, talking his way into someone’s bed as he so often does. 

He doesn’t expect Sylvain to grab Felix’s arm, drag him over to a tiny building that barely qualifies as an inn, and ask the innkeeper for a room without even asking Felix’s opinion. He looks at him all the while like he’s expecting an argument, but Felix only shrugs, even when the innkeeper questions the number of rooms and Sylvain repeats that they only need one. 

Later Felix will tell himself he just agreed to see the stupid, surprised look on Sylvain’s face, so he doesn’t have to admit to the comfort of waking up from yet another dream and seeing red hair and a body that always sprawls out like it’s Sylvain’s right to take up too much space.

* * *

Fhirdiad is not so far from their homes, and it’s a few short days before they’re entering southwest Fraldarius territory. It isn't barren like the rocky, frozen wastes of Galatea, but it’s been a cold early summer. The evergreen forests are still dusted with snow, and the distant scent of the ocean is dulled by the cold of the air. There’s nothing hospitable about it, and even the soldiers who grew up in ice and cold are starting to grumble about the weather. 

Felix is used to the snow. He’s from the north, where natives of the Alliance and Empire shrivel up and die of exposure before the first night is out. There’s no dread in the frozen-over rivers and intermittent storms, although he can see why people with thinner coats and leakier boots would hate it here. Out here in the woods, where he has to step carefully to not slip and crack his head open on the ice, he feels… settled. 

Sylvain, though? Sylvain doesn’t just cope with the falling snow and the storms blowing down from Sreng, he revels in it. He grows progressively more cheerful the longer they spend out in the cold, grinning into the wind, staring into the clouds like they’re his personal salvation. Felix could watch the way Sylvain slowly grows brighter and less self-conscious all day. He does watch Sylvain all day, from his position near the back of their party. 

Sylvain doesn’t walk with the slow, balanced shuffle that everyone else uses on iced-over paths. He rolls his weight from heel to toe like he knows in his bones where it’s safe to walk, like the ice agreed long ago not to hurt Sylvain Gautier. Even half-armored and wrapped up in leather and fur he’s self-possessed, graceful as any dancer, stepping through the frozen world like it belongs to him. He’s _ mesmerizing_.

But Felix catches himself, too soon and years too late to make any real difference. It’s just that Sylvain is the only bright spot in the whole forest, he tells himself. The soldiers they travel with are dressed in greys and browns and the occasional dark blue. Felix’s own traveling clothes are dark blacks and drab whites, and they blend into the harsh lines of shadows over snow as well as any native animal, as well as his pale skin and ink-dark hair do. Sylvain stands out like he’s trying to be noticed. He dresses like survival is a lesser thing than just being seen, because bright blue and dark red have never been fitting colors for winter clothes. Although perhaps Sylvain’s just accepted that camouflage is a losing battle, because hair more vibrant than blood and a smile as wide as it is (for once) sincere could never be the second-most captivating thing in sight. 

They should hurry north. They should always hurry north, back to their territories. There are things to do, skirmishes to fight, complaints to listen to, politics to learn. 

Except. 

Except waiting in Fraldarius is only a manor that’s run out of lords, other than an heir who only knows how to be a soldier. There’s a room that used to be his, and a room that used to be his father’s, and a pile of paperwork that’s dwarfed by the mountain of expectations placed on the Duke, whoever the Duke happens to be at any given time. The name and face are secondary to the role, Felix knows. War hero or not, no one will forgive him when his territory falls to starvation and dust. 

“You’re looking kind of pale there, Felix,” Sylvain says. Stupid northerner that he is, he doesn’t even look down where he’s striding over snow and ice. “I mean, even more than you usually do.” He leans in too close, surveying Felix from inches away. 

Felix stares straight past him, into the trees. “I was thinking,” he starts, and then waits for Sylvain’s mock surprise.

“_Really_?” Sylvain says, snickering at him, right on cue. 

“Our battalions are already ahead of us. We could send word for them to continue home. Make the rest of the journey by ourselves.” He shrugs. “Spend an extra day or two out here. Light a fire. Tell stories.” It’s too much, too vulnerable. It’s not an admission at all. He still doesn’t meet Sylvain’s eyes. 

Sylvain’s sharp whistle breaks through the stillness of snow and wilderness. “I never thought I’d see you being _ nostalgic_, Fe.” 

The mockery of Sylvain’s words matches the lump in Felix’s throat. “Fine. We won’t do that.” He’s glad he wasn’t looking at Sylvain’s face while he spoke. Even here, after a war and too many mistakes, in the closest thing they’ve come to a moment of peace and privacy in five years, this sort of closeness is too much. He breaks away from Sylvain, stepping carefully around him and stalking northward. 

“I didn’t say no,” Sylvain says, catching up to him easily. Why is Felix always surrounded by people who can’t take a hint when he wants to be left alone? 

“Sounds pretty nice, honestly, Felix,” Sylvain continues, moving into step beside Felix. “I’ll tell the commanders to go on ahead. You go start getting stuff for a fire.” 

Sylvain runs off without waiting for Felix to agree. It might be difficult to convince the soldiers to leave them; the Fraldarius soldiers in particular are stubborn about leaving their lord undefended. But there’s little danger out here, and everyone knows that Sylvain and Felix are two of the most lethal fighters in the world. Sylvain’s silver-tongued as well; surely that will be enough. 

There’s a moment where Felix tips his head back and stares into the bright-grey sky. It’s easier to think, looking up into clouds colored like nothing in particular. Easier to breathe. Sylvain was so _ eager_, is what he manages to think. He’s so eager to steal a few days out in the cold with only Felix for company. He’d half expected Sylvain to dismiss the soldiers but insist on sleeping in the next town, finding somewhere with warm food to eat and women to seduce. 

Felix straightens himself up and looks back into the forest around him. It’s easy enough to find branches that have been knocked down by the weight of the ice crusted on them, easy enough to chop them up - one smooth swing of his sword for each piece, bringing back a flash of Flayn laughing and tricking him into doing her chores - and carry them to a convenient clearing he’d spotted near a pond. 

Sylvain takes his time returning. Felix has already dried out the woodpile with a few clumsy fire spells and started a flickering little blaze when he hears the crunch of footsteps in snow, purposefully loud. It’s something he’s noticed, lately, that Sylvain has been taking care to step louder around him. It’s thoughtful. He’s torn between appreciation of the way Sylvain goes out of his way not to startle Felix and disgust that it’s necessary in the first place. Felix is a soldier, a lord, a Fraldarius. He has no reason to jump at shadows. 

“We can’t wait out here too long,” Sylvain informs him as he emerges into the clearing. “They went on ahead, but that commander of yours threatened to send out a search party if you don’t show up in the next four days. I’m pretty sure he was serious.” 

“It’s his job,” Felix says, inflectionless as he concentrates on stoking the fire into something that will last through the evening. “Did you take any of the rations or did you have some other plan for feeding us?” He’s tempting fate, he knows, giving Sylvain the perfect opening to suggest moving on to a town, somewhere with proper beds and too many girls.

“Figured we could hunt,” Sylvain says. He brandishes a light bow. “Been a while since I practiced any archery, but I’m sure I can still bring down a few rabbits or something. Hey, maybe I’ll get lucky and find a boar.” He steps up to the fire, crouching in front of it. Apparently the cold of the afternoon is a bit much even for a Gautier. He pulls his gloves off, one hand at a time, and holds his hands so close to the flames that Felix is almost concerned he’ll catch fire. Sylvain is facing away from Felix; he can’t see when Felix stares at his hands, lets his eyes trace over calloused fingers that he knows to be so strong and so tender. 

“Hunting,” he says, and the word feels unfamiliar in its lightness. When was the last time they hunted out of anything but desperation? “Your aim’s always been terrible. I’ll find something.” 

“Should’ve grabbed a bow yourself then, Felix. It looks like I’m equipped for hunting and you aren’t. Tough luck.” Sylvain winks at him over his shoulder. The cold started turning Felix’s cheeks pink hours ago; it must be enough to disguise his blush. 

“Bow or not, I’m the better hunter.” It’s a stupid competition and a stupid argument. He doesn’t know why he bothers.

Sylvain just grins and ambles off into the forest, bow held with the casually confident grip of someone who was raised wielding just about any weapon he could theoretically have to use. Felix could follow. He could make good on his assertion that he’s the better hunter, quiet that competitive little itch that’s rearing its head for real even though his protest was mostly an artifact of misdirection. He runs a hand over the dagger at his side, considering. 

In the end he just watches as Sylvain walks into the woods like they’re his first home. 

Sylvain’s always been confident, at least outwardly. Confident when talking to people, when flirting, when fighting. He can try a new skill for a week and look like he’s been practicing for years. It’s as infuriating as it is compelling. Sometimes it makes Felix want to rip open his ribcage almost as much as it makes him want to yank Sylvain down by the collar and kiss him until he shuts up. And even though Sylvain is confident and genuinely, frustratingly good at _ everything, _the frozen north is where he’s most at home.

So it’s with absolutely no concern that Felix settles himself down by the fire, laying out a bedroll and sprawling on top of it to keep the melting snow away from his skin. He waits, tapping at the hilt of his sword almost thoughtlessly, keeping one ear out just in case Sylvain calls for help.

It takes longer than he expects - he’s almost starting to get worried - but it’s clear why when Sylvain shows back up an hour later, an entire deer slung over his shoulders. He grins sharp and sly and hungry when Felix stares. 

“You still think you’re the better hunter?” He says with a grunt, setting the deer on the ground like it weighs nothing. 

Felix is almost speechless. He almost agrees with Sylvain, just to see how he’ll react. “A good hunter doesn’t kill more than he can eat,” he says instead, severely as he can. 

The brown of Sylvain’s eyes is warm with teasing amusement. “You’ve seen yourself eat, right? It was this or chase down like eight of those hares.” He gestures expectantly at the deer. “Help me butcher this thing.” 

“A good hunter,” Felix says, and he knows his voice isn’t nearly as stern as he wants it to be, “shouldn’t have any trouble dressing his own kill.” 

And Sylvain looks at him with a smile that Felix sees only rarely, a smug little thing that is meant to hide nothing. Sylvain smirks as he unsheathes a knife and drops to his knees in the snow. He doesn’t do anything to avoid getting the blood and snowmelt all over himself, just tugs off his gloves again and makes the first cut - a long slit up the belly of the deer. 

It’s nothing Felix hasn’t done himself a hundred times. He watches Sylvain anyway as he hunches over, making considering sounds as he slices skin in one smooth stroke before going over the bloody line with more pressure on the knife, splitting muscle open like it’s no stronger than gauze. 

It shouldn’t be so hard to look away. But Sylvain forgets to smile when he’s focusing like this, and it lets the lines of his face fall into the calm, soft cleverness he’s tried to hide for the last ten years. Sylvain rarely concentrates on one thing for so long and with such intensity that he forgets himself like that. It is, like so many things about Sylvain, mesmerizing. 

His hands are as captivating as his expression. Sylvain’s always had clever fingers, long and smoothed by expensive lotions just as they’re roughened by war. They’re all ridged calluses and raised scars and buttery-soft skin, Felix knows from experience. Now they’re reaching inside the cavity of a deer, covering themselves with blood that pools in the little creases at his knuckles and in the lines of his palms. They’re precise enough to wield a butchers knife with confidence, strong enough to rip through layers of fat and blood vessels, and warm enough to leave Felix lying awake more nights than he’d care to admit, feeling the phantom of their warmth on his skin.

And Sylvain just has to choose that moment to look up and catch Felix’s stare. “There something you want a closer look at?” He asks, almost innocently, continuing his work even though he’s not looking at what the knife’s doing. Felix should scold him for it, before he loses a finger. 

“You stare at me often enough,” Felix says, defensive against the warm wells of fear and fondness in his chest. It’s not what he meant to say; he’s lost the knack of saying what he meant to say, if he ever had it. 

Sylvain smiles slow and careless like he’s read all the words that Felix has thought to himself over the last month. He doesn’t say anything else, just holds Felix’s gaze for a second longer and looks back down at the deer, still with that dark little smile that Felix wishes he was brave enough to touch. 

Sylvain does most of his work in silence. He demands Felix’s help to hang the thing up when he finishes ripping the entrails out. Felix nearly refuses, just to be contrary, just because this is a task that doesn’t matter and that he _ can _ refuse without inadvertently dooming some defenseless village. It’s been so long since he had decisions to make that had nothing to do with other people’s survival. Right now, for once, he’d rather sit back and let someone else spend the afternoon with hands deep in the entrails of a dead thing. Let him spend one day with hands free of blood, even the blood of an animal that died for food. 

But Sylvian’s amusement is turning into clever exasperation and who knows what he’ll do if Felix doesn’t help. So Felix gets up, however grudgingly, helps him haul the deer up and string it from a sturdy tree.

“Thank you so much for your considerate help, Duke Fraldarius,” Sylvain says with a mocking bow, and Felix goes cold.

“Don’t bother thanking me,” he says, and the bitterness is there in the back of his throat even though he manages to keep most of it out of his voice. 

There’s silence, because Sylvain noticed anyway. It shouldn't be a problem. Felix is at home in silence, far more so than Sylvain. It should be easy to look out into the forest and ignore it until Sylvain gives up and starts rambling on again, as he always does, about food and friends and whoever he’s fucked most recently. 

But the silence continues, and Felix isn’t sure whether to be annoyed or not. Because either Sylvain just feels like being quiet, which is fine, or Sylvain has decided that being quiet is a decent strategy for getting Felix to talk about himself, which is annoying and completely flawed and mostly still fine, or Sylvain is trying to be considerate. Which should be fine. 

There is nothing wrong and quite a lot right with Sylvain respecting Felix’s feelings on the subject of how much casual conversation is necessary and appropriate, and yet the silence bothers him. Silence in general never bothers Felix, not the silence of solitude or the lack of conversation during a good sparring match. It’s just this particular silence of Sylvain breathing and working and not talking that suddenly seems unbearable.

“Stop it,” Felix finally says half an hour later. He’s spent the time alternately tending the fire, going through half-hearted sword drills, and staring at Sylvain’s hands. Sylvain has spent it skinning the deer and separating the good meat from the bad and, still, not talking. He doesn’t seem upset, just content in his work. 

“Uh, stop what? Stop butchering the deer?” Sylvain’s confusion is understandable, given the complete lack of context Felix provided. 

“No! Stop being so quiet.”

“You know you’re always telling me to shut up, right?” Sylvain puts down his knife so he can turn around entirely and fix Felix with his most amused smirk. “I thought I’d comply for once. See if it helps your stress levels at all. And, uh, I guess it really doesn’t,” he says when Felix just glares. 

“You don’t have to chatter all the time. If you’re quiet for so long you’re going to make me think something’s wrong with you,” Felix says. He doesn’t add _ you’re going to make me think something’s wrong with me_. 

“Nah, just enjoying the quiet for once. Listen to that complete lack of screaming or people yelling orders and shit. You can hear nature.” Sylvain takes a deep breath and exhales, staring up into the evening sky. “I’ll get tired of it pretty soon, but it’s a good change of pace.”

Felix shrugs. “Nature. Sure. The trees are pretty,” he offers, flatly. And they are. He admires the way they contrast with the snow, and how the light falls on them bright and shadowed. He doesn’t have the words for any of that, though. Bernadetta could have described how the light on the dark forest was beautiful; Felix’s vocabulary in that sort of thing is lacking. 

Sylvain seems to understand anyway, judging by his quiet chuckle. He grins over at Felix, bright and sudden and too full of feeling for Felix to process. “Hey, I can ramble on if that’s what you want. Anything in particular you want me to talk about?” 

“Anything but girls.”

“Okaaaay, so you ruled out one possible topic. It is, arguably, my favorite conversation topic, but you sure you don’t have any other requests? Hell, I’ll try a monologue about _ anything _you like.” He winks, still wearing that searing grin. “Just for you, Felix.” 

He’s never the best at talking, and that particular smile makes it even harder. Because Sylvain knows what he’s doing, and Sylvain must know that Felix can tell. They’ve known for years and years, and any possible doubt was driven out in the last few days after Enbarr. Sylvain means _ anything _ \- he could spend an hour rambling on about the way the sunlight glimmers off Felix’s hair, or the perfection of his sword form, or all the ways he plans on making sure that neither of them dies before the other. He could tell Sylvain to list the things that he _ loves _about Felix and Sylvain would, with plenty of gentle mockery but absolutely no animosity or surprise.

But Felix is a coward. He’s a coward with looming responsibilities that he has no idea how to approach and and the spectre of death hanging over the thousands of people depending on him for survival. It barely _ matters _ that he’s certain how Sylvain feels; he’d rather charge Enbarr all by himself than open up to the sort of vulnerability that even talking about love would bring. 

“Tell me about -” _ what you want to do now the war’s over; how you’re going to avoid whatever marriage your parents have in mind; tell me how much you’ll miss me. _ “Talk about the way the light falls on the snow. I’m expecting an hour of poetry, Sylvain.” It’s flippant, almost mocking. 

Sylvain steps forward, close enough that Felix would have to tilt his head back to look him in the eyes. Felix stares straight ahead instead, at the curve of his mouth and the scarf wrapped around his neck and at the forest, behind them both. Sylvain holds a hand out like an invitation. 

“You’re still covered in blood,” Felix says. “I’m not touching you.” 

Sylvain chuckles like he’d forgotten himself and takes a moment to lean down and wipe his hands off in the snow. It doesn’t remove all the blood, but the worst is gone. He slips an arm around Felix’s shoulders and walks them both back to the fire. 

“I don’t hear that monologue you promised,” Felix says, mostly to distract himself from the warmth of Sylvain nestled too close against him. They’re alone; there’s no one to see. “And you’re in my space.” But he doesn’t make any attempt to put distance between them, and Sylvain stays right where he is.

“You specified poetry. Don’t I get five minutes to compose? I mean, I _ could _ just start rhyming at you.” 

“Don’t you dare,” Felix says, hiding his smile. 

“That’s what I thought. So I do get a free five minutes to think, right? That’s not gonna offend your very specific tastes too much?” 

Felix sighs. “You can think while you finish butchering the deer. We still haven’t eaten.” 

“You really expect me to write you a poem while I cut this thing up? That sounds so much harder. And it’s the opposite of romantic, Felix.” He gets up anyway and resumes slicing apart the muscles. Felix can hear him muttering rhymes under his breath, _ light, bright, fight_.

“Learn to multitask already. And who said anything about romance?” Felix is smiling openly, now that there’s no risk of Sylvain seeing it. 

“Uh, all poetry is romantic. And your interruptions aren’t helping. It’s gonna be entirely your fault if this is the worst poem Fodlan has ever seen.” 

“I’ll try to grade it on effort,” Felix says. 

“You say the sweetest things. Guess I’m guaranteed an A, huh?” Sylvain lapses back into silence, except for the continued muttering as he tries out a rhyme or a turn of phrase. The quiet crackle of the fire mixed with Sylvain’s murmuring behind him is soothing.

He finishes quickly and returns to the fire with a few sticks speared through chunks of meat. “One of these days I should really learn something about cooking,” Sylvain says as he hands a couple to Felix. “I mean, besides sticking food in a fire until I get impatient.” 

“It’s practical,” Felix says, shoving a kebab over a patch of coals and waiting impatiently for the venison to start sizzling. 

“So did you want your poem now or after we eat?” Sylvain grins over at him. “It’s a good poem. Really one of my best.” 

Felix ignores the way his heart drops into his stomach. “You actually wrote that thing?” He asks, like he couldn’t hear Sylvain struggling to find the right words. He’d heard _ bright_, and _ shine_, and _ amber_, and enough other snippets that he’s a little afraid of hearing the end result. 

“Your attention please,” Sylvain says, and hands his kebab to Felix before he stands up, moves to the other side of the fire, and clears his throat theatrically. “A poem written by commission of Felix Fraldarius, on the topic of the light falling on snow.”

“I commissioned nothing,” Felix says. 

“Which I will now declaim if the audience will stop heckling me,” Sylvain says. Felix shuts up.

_ If ever there has been a fall of snow_  
_Which danced beneath the glory of sun’s light_  
_And covered up the ground with blanket bright_  
_Refracting sunlit sky with storied glow; _  
_If ever you have watched the blizzards blow_  
_And choke the budding spring with winters spite_  
_Turn greening leaves to grey with coldest bite_  
_You may have witnessed winter’s beauty; though_

_The crystal-frozen forests can’t compare_  
_The moonlight over snowfall and the shine_  
_Of stars that slumbering ice enshrine _  
_Cannot eclipse the amber of your eyes_  
_They serve to glimmer on your crows-wing hair_  
_And I can only, awed, soliloquize._

Sylvain bows with a flourish, turning left and right like he’s before a real audience. But there’s no audience, only one man who’s staring with eyes wide and hands shaking so much it’s hard to continue the simple task of roasting venison over the coals. 

“So what did you think?” Sylvain asks, sitting back down next to him like absolutely nothing is unusual. 

“You’re a better poet than I expected,” Felix says, because for a moment it’s the only words his brain seems able to process. “The last lines strayed from your topic,” he adds, because it’s easier than _ did you really just write a sonnet about me_.

“Hey, sometimes inspiration strikes and you just have to embrace it,” Sylvain says from right beside Felix. “And there’s a whole lot of inspiration in that particular topic, you know?” 

“Is there,” Felix says, barely a whisper. Sylvain’s sitting so close that even a whisper should be heard loud and clear. There’s a moment where they both consider the benefits of plausible deniability, where Felix almost hopes that Sylvain laughs and tells him about some girl with amber eyes and dark hair. 

“I could write a lot of poems about you,” Sylvain says, and laughs his too-loud nervous laugh. “You know, I’m a really shitty writer? That’s honestly the best sonnet I’ve ever managed just now.” 

Sylvain keeps rambling on about poetry, like he always rambles when he thinks he’s said too much. No volume of words could bury the confession hidden in this, or in every word he’s said to Felix since Enbarr. 

“I’d like to hear them,” Felix says, against his own will and spurred by the awful pounding of his traitor heart. “Someday.” Not today, when the world is already filled with so much looming terror that he can barely conceptualize next week.

“What was that?” Sylvain says, turning to face him. “You said -” the doubt is written in the crease between his eyebrows.

“I’d like to hear them someday,” Felix says again, louder this time. He forces himself to meet Sylvain’s eyes. “Not right now. I can’t -” he makes a little helpless gesture he hopes encompasses himself and the territory around him and everything he has to do. Someone else might be able to put it into words; Felix finds himself struck mute by the enormity of it all. “Someday,” he manages again. 

“...huh,” Sylvain says. “Someday. That a promise, Felix?” His smile is as sad as it is hopeful. 

“It’s a promise,” Felix says. He could drown in the way Sylvain’s watching him. “Someday I’ll -” _ kiss you, hold you, ask you to be only mine _“-ask you to write me more poems.” The words are flimsy things to hold such a heavy promise. 

“Huh,” Sylvain says again. He reaches up to cup Felix’s cheek, just for a moment. Felix could die in that touch. “I’ll remember that. Try to make _ someday _ before my parents actually force me to marry someone, yeah?” 

“I’ll try, Sylvain,” Felix says. 

The venison burns into unappetizing charcoal before they remember to eat it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's [fanart](https://twitter.com/charhoang/status/1308180551917096960)!!!
> 
> This chapter, like the last one, wasn't in my outline at all. I wrote half of a future chapter before I figured out that I really needed something to bridge the gap between Garreg Mach and Felix trying to settle into his role as Duke. I hope you enjoyed the pining.
> 
> At one point I was pretty good at poetry, but it's been a fucking minute since I wrote a sonnet. This one turned out... fine, I guess. Thank you for bearing with my poetry, and apologies if the meter is a little awkward.
> 
> I die in a good way every time I get a comment notification, and if I haven't responded to yours it's only because I'm a little self-conscious and overthink internet etiquette constantly. Please keep leaving comments.


	10. Fraldarius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no violence, corpses, or funerals in this chapter! That's rare for this fic, huh.
> 
> Warnings for references to really shitty family situations.

The snow starts to melt the next day under a bright sun that’s finally appeared from behind the clouds. Without the blanketed snow there’s nothing to hide the muddy fields where last summer’s crops were never harvested and the winter-growing garlic and peas were never planted. 

There should be people preparing the fields, now that the ground is already thawing from what was probably the last frost of the year. They occasionally pass farmers plowing the newly-softened ground. There aren’t enough. 

Fraldarius is coastal, full of villages that spend their days farming and fishing. They should be bustling with activity in the beginning of summer, when the seas are becoming less treacherous. And there are people working, hauling nets and repairing boats. They wave when the see Felix and Sylvain walking down the path, either out of recognition or sheer exuberant friendliness at the beginning of the warm season and the end of a war. There aren’t enough. 

Felix is never talkative. He grows quieter still as they travel. And though Sylvain’s presence at his side is more comforting than words can say, and although they have two full days before the Fraldarius soldiers will follow through on their threat to send out a search party, he can’t find the heart to linger anymore.

The slowing of seasonal activity must be obvious to Sylvain too, because he keeps looking around with a little frown on his face as though he expects to see someone right around the corner. Northern Faerghus is where both of them grew up; they were taught about the lives and livelihoods of the commoners they’re supposed to protect. They spent childhood summers running wild around the countryside with put-upon caretakers trailing behind them, learning where the villages are and how many people live in them and how much they produce, and which bakers could be counted upon to give free cookies to a group of noble children. 

Fraldarius Manor crests the horizon too slowly and far too soon. It’s a castle, really, built to withstand sieges and storms. Its outer walls are a whole yard thick, solid stone and brick with occasional gaps that Felix used to hide in as a child. The pillars and parapets were intended as watchtowers and archers nests, not luxuries. The broad tables in the vast great hall are used for feasts in this century, but they were built to seat a thousand fighting men. The clatter of activity in the courtyards and surrounding town only highlight the unnatural quiet of every other village they’ve passed.

_ I’m home_, Felix thinks experimentally. The words feel like they’re being dropped into an empty well. Home isn’t a castle emblazoned with Felix’s name, with too many empty rooms and half a life of memories he doesn’t care to examine. He doesn’t know what home is. It isn’t Fhirdiad or Garreg Mach, and it certainly isn’t Fraldarius. It’s a hard fight and a warm fire and someone to watch his back.

A gatekeeper bows and welcomes him home as they enter the manor; Felix nods and thanks her, in polite words that he memorized more than a decade ago.

It’s mid-afternoon, still. There’s hours of daylight for Sylvain to keep traveling north. But when Felix glances over his left shoulder he’s still standing there, right where he’s been for the last two days. 

“Have a meal sent up to my fathe- to the duke’s quarters,” Felix says to one of the servants. _ His _quarters, now. Those quarters are always meant for the head of the house, which is unfortunately Felix. 

“You’re staying for the afternoon, I suppose?” He asks Sylvain, so sure the answer’s _ yes _ that he’s already grateful. 

“Couldn’t kick me out if you tried,” Sylvain says. He sounds so chipper that it’s definitely forced. “Figure I’ll stay the night and leave in the morning. My old guest room’s still set up, right?”

“Probably,” Felix says.

Tapestries in blues and blood-red adorn the vast entrance hall. A few show landscapes or flowers; most depict battles, or some ancient saint’s slow death. He’s always thought they were tasteless. 

“Maybe I’ll redecorate.” He leads Sylvain up the steps into the rest of the castle. “The family never seems to realize there are more than two available colors,” he says, and realizes his mistake. “That is, they never seemed to.” 

“Guess it’s tradition. You know, Faerghus is all about never letting anyone forget about the bloodier parts of our glorious history.”

“Tradition.” Felix’s disgusted scoff could scandalize a whole crowd of priests. “What has tradition ever done for us?” 

He hesitates where a hall branches. The left fork leads to the rooms he’s lived in for his whole life. The hall straight ahead leads to his father’s old quarters. Felix slowly walks straight onward. 

The duke’s quarters are the same as they always are. An arched window looks out on the expanse of Fraldarius, facing toward the ocean. It’s always been the best place to watch a sea-storm roll in. Low bookcases are shelved with dozens of carefully-bound manuscripts on politics and etiquette, with the bottom shelves taken up by files of correspondence and neatly-sorted reports on affairs of state. Copies of relevant historical records sit in a cabinet to the left of the door, while a pile of letters and current documents rests in the center of the desk. There are more papers than there should be but fewer than Felix feared, resting under a paperweight and next to his father’s favorite overly-fancy writing quill.

His father could have left for an afternoon, not for a war and then for a lifetime. Dust hasn’t been allowed to accumulate. Logs of wood sit in a clean fireplace, waiting to be lit.

Glenn’s portrait is still hanging above the door, directly across from the desk. In it he’s laughing, overconfident and effusive as he was in life, standing out by the ocean with the sunlight glittering off his armor. It’s a scene that never happened, commissioned after the tragedy. Every time Felix sees it he clenches his jaw until his teeth are about to shatter.

Sylvain steps carefully out of the way as Felix drags a heavy chair over to the door and hops up onto it, carelessly yanking the portrait off the wall. He carries it over to a cupboard and shoves it as far back as he can, facing the wall. It’s easier to breathe now that it’s out of his sight, and the room no longer looks as though his father just stepped out for a cup of tea. Vicious satisfaction stabs through Felix as he surveys the blank square where on the wall and at the scuff the chair’s legs have left on polished stone.

“I’ve wanted to burn that thing since I was thirteen,” he says into the silence. 

“Hm,” Sylvain says in a slow breath like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to laugh. “Bet there are enough shitty portraits around for a good bonfire.”

Reports on battle casualties, dwindling food supplies, the state of their funds - Felix takes stock mindlessly, flipping through parchment after parchment and noting down things in the back of his mind without really processing them. He lets the stack fall back onto the desk before he’s finished reading but long after getting the picture that things in Fraldarius are grim. 

Everything Felix could distract himself with seems worse. There’s his room, clothes and books and a few small trinkets that even he is too sentimental to throw out. There’s his father’s room, filled with the personal effects of a dead man. Felix breathes in deep, turning toward the door to his father’s private rooms like it’s hiding some slumbering beast that might rouse itself to rip his innards out. 

But it’s just a door. He tries the doorknob; it opens easily onto a private sitting room. Felix moves through it, opening every door he finds. His heartbeat thuds as loud as Sylvain’s footsteps by his side. It is what it is, exactly what Felix expected - a suite of rooms full of belongings that he recognizes with a feeling like swallowing a pile of splintered bones. It intensifies when he opens the door to his father’s old bedroom, and doubles when he takes a step inside. 

It’s far too much. Felix retreats into the relative safety of the study and shuts the door behind him, taking a shaky breath that feels like he’s been running for an hour. 

“I think I might stay in my old quarters for a while.” Felix’s voice is hoarser than it has any right to be. It sounds like he’s been crying. 

“Yeah, that’ll probably be easier,” Sylvain says. “We should get that stuff sorted out sometime soon, though. You’ll breathe easier once it’s done.” 

“We?” Felix questions Sylvain’s choice of words. “You need to return north. I’m sure your father has some task he wants to dump in your lap.” 

“Sure, I _ should_,” Sylvain grimaces. “Doesn’t mean I’m eager to. As soon as I’m back in Gautier they’ll go back to treating me like some sort of walking weapon. ‘Oh Sylvain, we need you to take your crest and go stop an invasion so we don’t have to leave our castle! Kill these bandits! Marry already and gives us ten perfect little copies of you!’” He laughs, trying to pass it off as a joke.

“You deserve better than that,” Felix says before his vocal chords can consult his brain. 

“Yeah, well, pretty sure you do too, Felix. Kinda shitty having to sort through your dead dad’s stuff.” 

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” Felix asks, mostly to distract himself from the uncomfortable prickling behind his eyes. 

“I should go in the morning.” Sylvain tries on a smile. “Hey, the sooner I go home and take care of whatever my parents bother me about the sooner I’ll be back here, right?”

“They might not like that,” Felix says, and wonders why he doesn’t even think to question Sylvain’s statement that he’s returning to Fraldarius.

“Who really cares what they think?” Sylvain says with an annoyingly fake grin. Sylvain cares, Felix knows, or he wouldn’t be bothering to go back to Gautier at all. “We’re war heroes and you’re a duke. What exactly could my parents do about it, anyway?” 

The glimpses Felix saw of trade reports and food supplies haunt him. He rifles through papers for anything that seems relevant to the ways in which Margrave Gautier could spitefully fuck up the lives of Sylvain, Felix, and Fraldarius as a whole. “They could decide to take exception to our unofficial trade routes with Sreng, if they felt like being subtle. Or they could just stop trading dairy products and forge supplies.” He shrugs. “There are probably some other things.” 

Sylvain’s gaping at him. “Uh, since when do you know anything about stuff like that?”

“Since I learned I was becoming the duke a few decades sooner than I expected, _ Sylvain_,” Felix just about snarls. “I’ve been reading.” 

“I mean, yeah, that sounds about right. Look, they probably wouldn’t actually do that.” Sylvain doesn’t sound convinced. “Or they’d at least give us some warning if they were planning to try that sort of coercion. Look,” and Sylvain’s trying very hard to sound reasonable and convincing. “They want to maintain good relationships with the other territories so they can count on the southern lords to send soldiers and food, right? Fraldarius is much too powerful for them to alienate.”

“As though I’d refuse to send aid anyway. Most of Gautier has nothing to do with your parents.” 

Sylvain slings an arm around Felix’s shoulders and leans in like he’s about to tell him some secret. “Yeah, Felix, _ I _ know you’re too good for politics, but don’t tell _ them _ that. Now, you want me to help with some of this paperwork?” 

The paperwork itself isn’t the problem, it’s the decisions. It will take far longer than one afternoon to decide what to do about everything. He’ll have to schedule meetings with merchants and advisors, and spend hours trying to decipher which ones lie the least.

“Forget the paperwork,” Felix says. Some of it’s been here for months. It will keep for another day. “Spar with me,” he says impulsively. 

“Sure,” Sylvain says, instead of arguing. 

* * *

Night is falling by the time Felix and Sylvain finish sparring. They never eat the dinner that was delivered to the duke’s office. Sylvain drags Felix down to a little tavern for dinner instead, and Felix drags them back to the castle before Sylvain’s reflexive flirting with the waitress can turn into anything else, and only two hours after dark they’re standing in the hallway in front of Felix’s old quarters. 

“Do you not remember where your rooms are?” He asks as Sylvain makes no move to leave. 

“You know, in the end you never got the servants to air them out? That place is definitely gonna be unlivable. Guess I’m stuck staying with you again.” 

“A little dust isn’t unlivable. And you haven’t even checked.” Felix doesn’t object to Sylvain staying with him, but the argument feels expected. 

“What, a guy can’t prefer a bed that isn’t covered in years of dust? I do have _ some _ standards.” Sylvain sounds so insulted that it must be exaggerated. 

“You’ve passed out in places much worse than a dusty mattress. Anyway, the servants maintain the guest rooms.” Felix wrinkles his nose at the memory of too many taverns and battlefields.

“Okay, you’re not wrong, but given the choice I’ll take a nice, warm, properly aired-out bed any day. So, you gonna let me in, Felix?” He grins winningly down. 

Felix grumbles an under-his-breath dissatisfied noise as he lets them both in. 

Sylvain strips unselfconsciously to his shorts and sprawls himself out on the bed as comfortably as when they were both children. He smirks when he catches Felix looking. “Like I said, you can stare as much as you want.” 

Clothes that still fit Felix fill the wardrobe, although some of them are a little tighter on the arms and chest than they should be. He changes into a soft shirt and pants that stay comfortable even in the evening chill, facing the wall so he doesn’t have to look at Sylvain’s admiring gaze. 

“Move over,” he says, shoving at Sylvain’s shoulder, because he always has a trick of taking up as much space as he can. Sylvain shifts reluctantly like he’s doing a favor by giving Felix the space to get into his own bed, and then drapes himself half over Felix once they’re both settled under the blankets.

“You’re heavy,” Felix says in half-hearted protest. 

“Deal with it,” Sylvain says back to him. 

The pressure of Sylvain sprawled against him should be maddening. And it is, a little, in that Felix has to remind himself not to run a hand through his hair and reach down to explore all the differently-shaped scars the war gave him. But mostly it’s just comforting. Sleeping with a Sylvain-shaped blanket has slowly become normal, and Felix is sure that should worry him much more than it does.

* * *

Morning comes too quickly. Felix is jarred awake by sunrise streaming through the windows. Normally he’d train for an hour before the rest of the household starts to stir, but today he’s still pinned under a snoring Sylvain.

Felix stays. 

Judging by the shifting light it’s an hour before Sylvain wakes. Before he even opens his eyes he reaches to blindly pat around with one hand, as if he needs some assurance that he isn’t waking up alone. He finally makes a sleepy grumbling sound and blinks awake, yawning and wiping little crusts of goo from where they’ve collected in the corners of his eyes. The window with its partly-open curtains is a yard from the end of the bed and Sylvain reaches out, trying to drag the curtain closed without completely leaving the bed, but he collapses back down when he can’t stretch far enough.

He’s utterly unpolished, hair in disarray, face creased in annoyance, and one arm slung carelessly over Felix’s chest. No one sees Sylvain like this; he’s always playing some sort of role. 

It makes Felix want to gather him up and protect him. 

“Get up,” Felix says instead, rolling out of bed himself. “It’s morning. You have traveling to do.” 

Sylvain groans. “You’re really that eager to get rid of me?” 

“I will be if you keep drooling on my pillow,” Felix says, even though the thought of waking up next to Sylvain for another few mornings is nothing like unpleasant. 

Whatever Sylvain starts to say is lost in an enormous yawn. Felix ignores him and rummages around for clothes that are more suitable for paperwork than battle, a dark tunic and jacket that for once aren’t cut for a swordmaster’s mobility. They feel strange. By the time Felix stops experimentally testing the shoulder-seams Sylvain has already slipped back into yesterday’s clothes. 

“What do you think you’re _ doing_,” Felix snaps when Sylvain steps behind him and gathers up his hair with a look of intense concentration. Despite the words he ducks his head forward a little, letting Sylvain do as he likes.

“You always wear the same style,” Sylvain says, not bothering to give an obvious answer to an obvious question. “I could change it up a little for you. A braid would look really cute, right?” Felix can feel the hands separating his hair into three sections. 

“I will stab you where you stand if you even think about braiding my hair.” 

“Come on, it’d look nice.” But Sylvain combs out the braid he was starting, sweeps Felix’s hair to the back of his head and secures it in a messy ponytail. His hands stay on Felix’s neck for another breath. “Maybe someday you’ll braid your hair just for me, huh, Felix?” 

_ Someday_. In some future that holds poems and flowers. “...Someday,” Felix says, so soft that he isn’t sure Sylvain can hear. 

* * *

Felix loiters awkwardly in the stables as Sylvain saddles his horse. Neither of them make much attempt at conversation, but Sylvain keeps giving these worried little glances that he probably thinks are subtle. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Felix finally says, as Sylvain glances over again after checking the fit of the girth for the third time. 

“Would you really rob me of one last look at you before I leave?” Sylvain says, falling back to overdramatic charm.

“Yes,” Felix says, because he knows it’ll turn Sylvain’s brittle smile into something real.

“Aw, Felix, but isn’t this just the image you want me to remember? Hair in a terrible ponytail - I really fucked that one up - wearing zero swords, and looking so uncomfortable. The air’s even scented with horseshit. This isn’t where you want your portrait painted?” 

“Ugh. Don’t remind me about the portrait.” 

Sylvain finally unties his horse and leads it out of the stables. Felix follows. 

“I guess this is goodbye,” Sylvain says, more solemn than he ever is. 

“You’ll be back,” Felix says, trying to keep his tone light for both their sakes. 

“Yeah. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” Sylvain says. “And I’m pretty sure you have tried a few times.” 

An uncomfortable number of examples flip through Felix’s memory. There’s one in particular where Sylvain’s looking up at him in a darkened bedroom, fingers trailing over Felix’s scars, smiling dark with promise. 

“Sorry,” Felix blurts before he can turn it into an insult. “For trying to drive you away.” 

Sylvain freezes in something like shock, and Felix’s heart crumples in on itself a little more. 

“I’m serious,” Felix says when Sylvain doesn’t answer. “Everything’s been - hard. I’m sorry.” There must be words for what he’s apologizing for, for every time Felix has made Sylvain’s expression freeze into that merciless smile he only wears when something inside him is genuinely shattered. Occasionally it happened by accident. Mostly it didn’t. 

But now Sylvain just looks wounded, without any smile to cushion Felix from the full force of his stare. “I’m sorry too,” Sylvain says, too soft and too pained. “You’re not the only one who’s said a lot of stupid things. I’ve probably pushed you too far a few times. I’m the one who should be apologizing.” 

Felix glares, stepping forward. “_No _. You can apologize some other time. Just listen to me. I’m sorry, understand? I’m trying,” he inhales, searching again for words that he’s not sure he’s ever learned, “to stop.” It’s a weak finish. 

“You know, I noticed? You’ve been less stabby for the last couple weeks.” Sylvain just looks thoughtful now, which is a step up from wounded but still frighteningly sincere. 

“_Stabby _? I don’t know why I ever listen to you.” Felix glowers.

“Do you usually insult people while you’re apologizing to them? Just curious,” Sylvain says. “Like, you don’t have to stop. It’d feel weird if we got through a whole conversation without you getting sort of angry about something. It’s kinda cute, you know, like a hedgehog.” Sylvain’s smile looks real. 

“Oh. Uh... “ Felix’s answer dies before it can begin, because what exactly do you say to that?

“There’s one thing you could do to make it up to me,” Sylvain says. 

“What,” Felix answers, instantly suspicious at the tone of voice. 

“Remember that time I almost died a few months ago? You never actually hugged me.” Sylvain chuckles. “Like, you’ve spent way more time than I really expected letting me hug you, but you’ve never actually started it.” 

“Oh,” says Felix, and it should be such a small thing compared to what they’ve been through. It is not a small thing. It’s an admission and a vulnerability, and Felix has never been one for showing his weak spots. But it’s Sylvain, just Sylvain standing an arms length away in the Faerghus morning with that solemn look on his face and his hair still sticking up at odd angles, getting ready to ride off to his own lands. 

It’s hard to step forward. But when he slips his arms around Sylvain’s chest it’s easy to clench his hands in the back of his cloak and rest his chin on Sylvain’s shoulder, and it’s a relief to relax into Sylvain’s arms like they were made just for him. Sylvain’s breathing is uneven like he’s fighting back laughter or tears, and Felix honestly couldn’t guess which one is more likely. 

Felix’s father used to talk about seeing Fraldarius manor rising above the horizon as he rode back home, before everything. He’d describe the joy of being welcomed and needed, of having a place to return to that would never fall. He’d say that Fraldarius was a home that would protect their family as long as they protected it. 

Every time Felix returned to the manor he’d wait to feel that warmth, like every drop of sunrise distilled into one moment. It never appeared. He’d assumed it never would. Now it rolls over him like a wave as he tugs Sylvain closer, filling him with a comfort that briefly overwhelms the screaming fear. 

They pull away at the same time, and Felix lets his hands drop back to his sides. 

“Try not to die out there,” he says, in place of all the things he can’t quite vocalize. 

“Nah, I can’t help you with paperwork if some bandits kill me,” Sylvain says, smiling like the sunrise. “I’ll see you soon, Felix.” 

He finally mounts up and turns to face the northwest, spurring his horse into an easy trot. Felix watches until Sylvain is just a bright smudge against the grey of the earth and sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thirty thousand words in and these guys are finally getting most of the way to open, honest communication. And we're at approximately the halfway point! The exact chapter count might change, but we're getting there. 
> 
> Look, I know that Felix technically has an uncle who manages Fraldarius sometimes, but he isn't even named in 3h and frankly I don't care about being canon-accurate to that degree. And you know what's infuriating, besides how the game doesn't bother to name anyone's family members? The distances in Fodlan make no fucking sense. I spent actual hours squinting at a map and then reading about climates and trade routes to figure this fucking thing out, and now I'm bullshitting about the economy of Faerghus so hard that it's wrapping back around into reasonably well-researched conjecture.
> 
> As of this week I'm finally on twitter, I guess. Find me @thecaryatid if that's a thing you want to do.


	11. Sylvain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's Sylvain's point of view. It's basically a character study, to be honest.
> 
> Warnings for shitty parents, a sexy daydream, and far too much of Sylvain's bullshit internal monologue.

The ride back to Gautier is too monotonous to distract Sylvain from his thoughts. No Felix to tease, no girls to flirt with, no soldiers to idly chat to. It’s just Sylvain and himself, and by the third hour he’s drowning in unwanted introspection.

This is what Sylvain knows, even though he’s stubborn and foolish and willfully ignorant: 

Felix spent the war as a half-broken disaster, a sturdy ceramic plate that was dropped one too many times, smooth surfaces cobwebbed with cracks waiting to break apart. He was just whole enough that no one tucked him safely away from the fighting - a cracked plate still fills its basic function, if you’re careful and don’t jostle it too much and know where the jagged edges are. A half-broken Felix was, at the end of the day, a better knight than half the army put together. The cracks spreading across his heart didn’t affect his skill in battle, his stubborn pragmatism, the sharp words he uses to spur other people on. They just affected everything else. 

The tiny smirks he used to wear while winning a spar vanished away during the war. Half-playful insults turned into grunts of acknowledgment or sentences with precise weight behind each cutting word. Indulgence for Ashe’s idealistic books became silent, tired patience. Rare, unveiled fascination and amusement with Annette’s songs became only the quietest hum of acknowledgment. Even his fury at Dimitri faded to bitter resignation; his anger at his father disappeared into frustrated regret. 

This is what Sylvain knows: the best moments of his life involved Felix’s grudging smiles, and during the war he’d thought they would vanish forever.

And this is what Sylvain’s noticed, during days spent tromping through forests and wandering away from the soldiers so eager to protect them: something has been changing ever since Dimitri came back to himself, and now it’s changing again.

Felix smiles when he thinks Sylvain isn’t looking, after years of facing every day with the same scowl. He makes dry half-jokes and always looks surprised when Sylvain laughs, and he stares openly at Sylvain’s hands and mouth and the broadness of his shoulders. Sharing has never been Felix’s strength, but lately he’s been sharing thoughts and hopes with Sylvain, haltingly, like he’d never even considered it was a possibility, and Sylvain falls a little in love every time he’s offered a sharp smile.

It’s a problem. 

Because the thing is, Sylvain’s never believed in any sort of love that extended beyond friendship. He’s been trying to make Felix laugh since they were children, when they were _ friends_, not whatever they are now, because Sylvain is a good friend when he’s not busy fucking his own life up.

Sylvain’s a guy who’d die for his friends, right? It’s not just Felix he’s taken a few arrows for - oh no, there was the axe blow he intercepted for Dimitri and the sword he jumped in front of for Ingrid. It isn’t even limited to his old friends - he was stabbed in the thigh for Annette and took a gauntlet blow that cracked ribs through his armor for Mercedes. Brushing it off as carelessness is easy. No one looks past a half-hearted line like _ couldn’t let anyone hurt a pretty thing like you_, and no one can tell that Sylvain’s supposed _ carelessness _ is actually _ recklessness_, because Sylvain always fights like he wants to die.

It fools them. Always, always Sylvain jumps into battle ready to be the shield that keeps anyone else from paying the final price, and then laughs it off after someone’s sword rips through his lungs. Everyone is fooled except for Mercedes, who’s never been fooled by Sylvain. And Felix, who looks at Sylvain with that disappointed frown he gets when he’s trying not to show how upset he really is. And it’s funny, really, how Felix’s disappointment is a better motivator to carefulness than countless memories of bleeding out in the mud.

And the thing is, right, Felix is the battle-hungry one. Felix himself is the most brutal person on the battlefield, carving a path out of other people’s lives with this cold stare like the time he’s spent forging himself into a weapon has worked so well his veins have filled with iron instead of blood. Or not iron, Sylvain thinks, that’s too poor a material for Felix. Silver, or whatever they make levin swords out of, that glassy black substance that gets lit up inside and out by lightning. 

Felix can’t make himself turn away from battle, but Sylvain’s got twice as many scars. 

He’s had time to compare, lately. And isn’t _ that _ a thought, because if he’d told his younger self that in five years he’d be pining over Felix and Felix would be _ letting him_, dressing and undressing in front of him with this little knowing look every time he catches Sylvain staring he’d have, what? Laughed and found some girl who was unlucky enough to think he might be sincere and then, hours later, jacked off to the imagined image of Felix’s scarred skin. 

Felix has plenty of scars. Sylvain has spent weeks staring openly, and he has most of them memorized. There’s a dagger slash at the base of the ribs on Felix’s right, just a few inches above a lance wound. Felix is never careful enough about protecting his right side, favoring as he does crushing opponents with overwhelming bursts of strength and speed. It shows, in the scars slowly accumulating along his right flank. 

Memorizing the shapes of Felix’s scars should be pathetic, but Sylvain feels more confident about it than most of his other decisions. Because okay, first of all, every time he falls asleep with Felix curled up soft against him - and it’s been a bunch of times, Felix has been sleeping with Sylvain in the non-sexy but still very sexy way every night they’ve had the barest reason. _ Oooooh Felix I can’t sleep in my own room it might be too dusty _ is the worst excuse Sylvain’s tried in a lifetime of bad excuses, and it _ worked_, and he’s sure Felix only argued because he wanted to pretend he wasn’t too eager.

Anyway, the scars, right? Every time Sylvain falls asleep next to Felix he’s stared at a jagged lightning scar that pokes over the collar of Felix’s usual nightshirt, or stared at the rest of him when he doesn’t bother with the nightshirt. Sylvain’s sure that the first thing he’s going to do if (no, _ when_, it seems more and more like _ when_) he talks Felix out of just sharing his bed and into _ sharing his bed _ \- the first thing he’s going to do is pin Felix down and kiss all of his scars.

Picturing it is easy. Felix, blushing and squirming like he’s desperate to be back in control but not really straining against the hands pinning him down, gasping out those nearly-inaudible moans he tries so hard to stifle as Sylvain starts at the lightning scar at the nape of his neck and moves slowly down, leaving gentle bruises over all of war’s unkind marks, until he’s licking softly at the thin silver line left by an equally silver sword at the middle of Felix’s thigh and Felix has abandoned his determined silence for little begging breaths of _ Sylvain_. 

Except begging isn’t right, is it? Sylvain surveys his daydream critically and replaces Felix begging with Felix snarling threats and tugging at his hair a little too hard and arching up into every one of Sylvain’s touches. 

It’s incredibly hot. Sylvain’s having the uncomfortable experience of having an erection while riding a horse through a cold forest, so that’s not the best timing he could’ve had for fantasizing about fucking his childhood friend. But the image he’s built for himself feels so right that he’s also warm in a way completely separate from arousal. It’s new. It’s good. 

The second thought about Felix’s scars, that spurs Sylvain on to memorize every single one, is that next time they see each other Sylvain will _ know _ if anything’s been so fucking bold as to pierce Felix’s skin. 

* * *

The ride between Fraldarius and Gautier is only a few days, and it would be shorter if Sylvain pushed himself. Of course, that’s just to Gautier castle near the center of the territory. The great watchtower on the border with Sreng is still another two days of leisurely travel or one long, forced march. 

Summer days are long and cold in Gautier. The few things they grow become green and vibrant under the wealth of sunlight, but they pay for it in winter when darkness overtakes all but the merest sliver of day. Something about the ocean currents on this side of the continent encourages frigid snow, while the Fraldarius side is kept warmer by the forgiving eastern waters. Everything is forgiving compared to Gautier. This far north even the hardy crops grown in Fraldarius start to wither and die; only Gautier’s military might and role as protector of the northern border keep it supplied with food and firewood. 

Various tutors explained the phenomenon to Sylvain at length, something about how the distributions of magical energy in the upper atmosphere combine with the slanted sunlight to intensify weather patterns at the extreme north and south of the world. It’s interesting in an academic sense, but knowing why the weather’s so fucked doesn’t help Sylvain do anything about it. 

At least the long hours of sunlight do produce excellent feed for livestock, and the bright frozen world is a fitting background on which to wear a fake smile over a closed-off heart. If Sylvain were religious he might call it fate. But since he’s a cynical fool who stopped believing in things like romance and fate years ago, he figures it’s just nurture. 

It always seemed wondrous that other children raised here still smile sincere and haven’t let the freeze creep its way into their blood. If anything the reverse is true - whole packs of people try to coat themselves in frost to hide the unfortunate fact that they still care. Like dozens of soldiers Sylvain could name, unflinching and terrified as they wait for their deaths at the watchtower. Like Felix, who spent years devoted to convincing the world he never had a heart.

Fascination probably isn’t the right response to have about the ways in which people brace themselves against tragedy. That sounds like something one of the mages would casually state before realizing that everyone’s looking at them in mild horror. Still, Syvlain’s nothing if not a dedicated observer of human nature, and sometimes he can’t help pushing at those icy exteriors to see how much pressure it takes to make a crack. Especially with Felix. 

In his calmer moments Sylvain wonders if his father is purposely prolonging conflict with Sreng just to keep receiving supplies from the southern lords. In his more cynical and - in his opinion - realistic moments, Sylvain knows surer than breathing that his father has passed up a dozen opportunities for tentative treaties in favor of throwing more soldiers at the border, and he only wonders how many generations it’s been going on for. 

All Gautiers live to stand as watchtower over the northern border. The rest of the lords face toward Fhirdiad, ready to defend the capital even during supposed peace, but Gautiers don’t ride south. They stay surrounded by ice and birth children until one has a crest running through its blood, and they guard the north until their hearts and bones freeze into the ice and stand forever in the shadow of the castle.

The metaphor is the next best thing to literal considering how many people die every winter and are found under melted snow, months later, with their eyes still wide and the blood frozen in their veins. It’s nearly literal because of one other very solid thing Sylvain sees as soon as he approaches the castle, because every lord of Gautier is immortalized on those outer walls in lifeless stone. They’re set into the southern wall of the fortress but eternally face north, as though visitors from within Faerghus are beneath their notice.

That’s the outward duty of house Gautier, after all, to always look north. And no one outside the family need realize that they hold their other, unspoken duty even closer to their hearts, feeding the war to ensure aid from the south continues.

Sylvain’s always wondered if he’s enough of a bastard to keep up the tradition. 

* * *

As Sylvain arrives at the castle he doesn’t stable his horse himself, just drops it off with a bright smile and a grateful nod. House Gautier has always been more hands-off about that sort of thing than house Fraldarius. 

The entrance to Fraldarius manor, with its careful arrangement of death-obsessed paintings, has always seemed an artifact of nostalgia for a bunch of legends that may or may not have any resemblance to actual events. Gautier Castle, by comparison, has an equally single-minded intensity towards proving that the Gautiers are serious about their military supremacy. The entrance hall might as well be a museum, with all the suits of armor and swords it has hanging on the walls under tasteful little plaques describing who used them and how they died. 

Sylvain makes his way toward the family quarters. Servants direct him toward his mother’s sitting room without stopping to ask if that’s where he was intending to go. 

His mother, Lady Gautier, is painstakingly writing a long letter as Sylvain enters her sitting room. He bows low and pastes on the warm little smile he always uses when he’s forced to interact with his family. 

“I’ve returned, mother,” he says when she doesn't look up. 

She finishes writing her sentence and gets delicately to her feet, smiling soft and gentle. Sylvain’s long since stopped trying to puzzle out whether there’s any warmth behind that expression. 

“I’m so glad you’re safe, Sylvain,” she says, and holds out both her hands expectantly until Sylvain grudgingly rests a gauntleted hand in them. They’re as delicate as the many layers of her finely-sewn dress - Lady Gautier was married for her political acumen and the accident of her blood, not for any strength of her own. 

“Please, join me for tea after you’ve changed into something appropriate,” she says to him. 

Sylvain nods and exits, making his way to his own room where a hot bath is already waiting. He doesn’t linger in the bath, and he puts on a proper courtly outfit that one of the servants has laid out on the bed, hurrying through the motions of turning back into a proper little lord so his mother can bear to look at him. There are no casual tunics for Gautiers at home; it’s armor or formality. 

In only twenty minutes Sylvain is dressed to his family’s satisfaction. His curly hair is still wet, but there’s nothing to be done about that. His mother’s favorite sitting room is always pristine; he’ll just be careful not to drip on any of the furniture. 

Tea is waiting when Sylvain returns, a delicate rose petal blend his mother favors. He sits down as expected, back perfectly straight. Lady Gautier pours the tea herself rather than calling for a servant, and although it’s intended as a sign of relaxed closeness it’s never made Sylvain feel anything but guarded. 

“The messengers we received from Fhirdiad all spoke highly of how you comported yourself during the war,” she begins, sipping tea delicately. “We’re so lucky to have such a capable young soldier in the family.”

So they’re getting right into it. Sylvain works to keep his smile bland and relaxed. “I couldn’t let you down, could I? I’m just doing what you taught me.” 

Lady Gautier nods approvingly. “I’m so relieved to hear that. You’re needed at home now, you understand, and your father is beginning to struggle with holding the border himself. Things will be so much easier now that you’re back.” She favors him with a smile slightly wider than her normal polite one. 

It’s so like tea with the professor on the surface, but backwards. The professor had an emotionless exterior but remembered Sylvain’s favorite tea and which topics to avoid. Tea with his mother involves only insincere smiles hiding polite manipulation.

“I wish I could settle back here already. There’s nothing like home, after all,” Sylvain lies. “But I'm concerned about the state of Fraldarius. The new duke has no idea how to manage a territory, and if it keeps declining they won’t be able to keep send us resources. We need to secure our support network in Faerghus before anything else.” Felix isn’t incompetent, but it’s a lie Sylvain’s parents will find easy to believe. 

His mother’s smile presses into a carefully regretful grimace. “Of course,” she says, “I’ll have to discuss it with your father, but I’m not surprised the Fraldarius child can’t properly manage a territory.” 

It isn’t the time to jump to Felix’s defense. Sylvain chuckles instead. “Yeah, he needs a little hand-holding.” Sorry, Felix. “But while you decide on the best course of action I’m happy to help with defense here. The Lance of Ruin and I are ready to go.” 

“How dutiful,” Lady Gautier says. “It’s gratifying what a responsible man you’ve grown into,” which is Gautier-speak for _ I’m so glad you aren’t making this difficult_. “I’m sure our captain has a list of things he needs your help with. You may talk to him after tea.” It clearly isn’t a request. 

So Sylvain makes conversation over the remaining pastries and excuses himself with a polite bow to go talk about military matters. 

There are always positions in need of support. When Sylvain shows himself into the military coordinator’s office he’s given a list in order of priority - giant wolves terrorizing a remote village, bandits harassing a trade route, a minor encampment that missed their most recent scheduled check-in. He’s to take the Lance of Ruin and leave the next day, reporting back when the tasks are done. Sylvain guesses it’ll take three weeks, between the time spent traveling and actually fighting. 

He leaves in the morning, after breakfast. His mother politely sees him off at the gates, pulling him into a stiff hug and wishing him success. Then Sylvain rides back into the wilderness, again with only his thoughts for company.

There’s a pang in Sylvain’s heart every time he notices the absence of a swordmaster pacing by his side. Three weeks of battle, huh? It’ll give his mother time to write his father, and with any luck they’ll decide that sending him back to Fraldarius is the best course of action. If they don’t… well, Sylvain will decide how many bridges he’s willing to burn when he gets there. 

For now the weight of his armor and the lance slung across his back are familiar, if not comforting, and the cold air around him matches the numbness slipping back into his veins. 

Gautier lords are not supposed to need anything but a horse and a weapon. Sylvain flattened a hair ribbon he swiped from Felix’s room between the pages of a blank journal and packed it anyway, nestled next to a pouch of unappetizing rations. He’s just found out how luminous Felix’s blush gets when he’s forced to listen to poetry, after all, and Sylvain intends to take advantage of that for the rest of his life. He’ll build a lexicon of pretty words about the light in Felix’s eyes and the grace in his every move and turn him into a blushing mess whenever Sylvain feels like it. It’s an unfair tactic, but Sylvain has never been fair. 

In one month he’ll be back in Fraldarius, either with his family’s blessing or with a great many metaphorical bridges on fire behind him, and he’ll have pages and pages of Felix-flustering material by then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain is the hardest 3h character to write, so why is my most self-indulgent chapter yet from his point of view?
> 
> This was going to skip straight to Sylvain meeting with his mom and have a solid 3k words of plot with only a little introspection, but then I was skimming through his dialogue in three houses and found the incredible line "I mean, I'll still fight like I want to die because that's worked so far, and why change at this late date, right?" and abruptly changed my plans.
> 
> I have so many fucking Gautier headcanons. I'm drowning in outlines of the political and economic situations of northern Faerghus. Send help.


	12. Regret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for more dealing with the death of a parent.

Fraldarius manor feels empty without Sylvain following in Felix’s footsteps with an outstretched hand offering help and comfort. Felix finds himself wishing, selfishly, that he’d asked Sylvain to stay. They could have come up with some excuse for Margrave Gautier, and Felix could have kept Sylvain in his home and life. He could have pulled Sylvain into more of those hesitant, desperate hugs, let Sylvain cradle the base of Felix’s neck and work insistent fingers through his hair until Felix let ten years of stress drain away into Sylvain’s waiting arms. 

Being away from Sylvain is not like ripping off a bandage, painful at the beginning and then fading. It’s like a pulled muscle, a dull ache that turns into sharp, insistent pain the longer Felix tries to act like it isn’t there.

So Felix does what he always does while ignoring some inconvenient pain. He works, and he tells himself that the ache between his lungs is from exhaustion or an actual pulled muscle.

After a week of grudgingly letting advisors coach him through the delicate art of writing diplomatic messages he’s already worked through the most urgent pile of paperwork. He responds to requests for aid, delegates the details of trade agreements to people who understand them better, and ignores the long messages already being delivered from Fhirdiad.

So he tackles the second most urgent problem, the uncomfortable state of the Fraldarius food supply. Felix spends days riding back and forth with a scribe and an expert on agriculture, personally interviewing farmers on their current situations and greatest needs. He walks away from that with an entire notebook of messy, spiky notes in his own hand, and several books in the neat writing of the scribe, and a concise list of immediately-needed items in the careful scrawl of the agriculture expert. 

It seems like a success, even though he can only find the resources for perhaps half of the urgent items on the list. Equipment is easy to redistribute; farms suffering from too much land and too few workers have enough plows and scythes to spare. The real problem is workers; soldiers are gradually returning to their homes, but that only goes so far. A section of the military force is reserved in case of uprisings in the former Empire, and more are working clearing roads and guarding towns from the still too-abundant bandits and monsters. Too many soldiers didn’t return from the war at all, and a handful of farmers and fishers returning to their lives is not enough to make up for years of poor harvests. 

And then everything slows down. Much of being a lord, Felix learns, is waiting for other lords to receive letters and find the time to respond, or sending increasingly polite messages to some merchant trying to schedule a meeting, or asking his staff to track down information that Felix needs but doesn’t know. It’s an exercise in patience punctuated with hours of frantic activity and nights of painful decisions, and Felix has never been any good at either patience or diplomacy. He learns, slower than he wants to but faster than he feared. Already there have been painful decisions - sell off stockpiles of silver ore or several dozen riderless war horses? Subsidize supplies for bakers or cobblers? No matter what he decides, people will suffer the consequences of things entirely outside of his or their control. It isn’t much comfort, to any of them. 

Which is why, after two weeks of working tirelessly, Felix finds himself with hours spent waiting on other people and with nothing to distract him from the Sylvain-shaped hole in his life. So with an ache in his lungs that refuses to go away, Felix faces the door to his father’s private quarters again and again. 

Felix could order the servants to pile up his father’s belongings and burn them. The servants would throw him the sorts of odd looks he’s already used to, what with his habit of being up as early as the kitchen staff and his tendency to handle everything himself. They would still follow the order, lighting a fire of last generation’s memories in the courtyard of the manor. 

But a room full of regrets is not a ghost to be exorcised in fire, or a war that can be won with anger and flames. It’s a phantom of Felix’s own creation that follows in his cold footsteps. It’s a hollow that’s been festering inside his own heart for the last ten years, snuggled against other pockets of contagion bearing the names of all Felix ever cared about. Some illnesses can only be healed by laying a body on a slab and prying a wriggling lump of disease from between layers of healthy tissues, and this seems to be one of those things. No amount of desperate avoidance will ever heal the pain of his father’s life and death.

So he reluctantly presses open the door, entering past the relative safety of the study he’s already made his own and into the private sitting room that he only entered once in the last five years. 

There are a few tacky paintings, like everywhere else in the manor. Richly-upholstered chairs, books for casual reading, a small table suitable for tea. Fine, all fine. Felix’s shudder is unnecessary; this was only the place where his father used to discuss matters with his closest allies. It’s no worse than the study, really. 

The real problem is the bedroom, filled with memories of a golden childhood that vanished in exactly one evening when his father looked at Glenn’s mangled armor and told Felix not to mourn. But Felix knows that turning his father’s room into a dust-filled shrine will only hurt himself, and besides - he can allow himself to do this one thing in service to the dead. Felix pushes the door open and waits in the entrance as though stepping closer will melt the clasp of his cloak into his flesh. 

It’s a room, nothing more. It’s so many years removed since he was a child welcomed to come tumbling in here to wake his father on festival days, or shuffle in shyly to beg more stories about Loog, or stomp in with teary eyes to complain about Glenn’s latest mean trick. Not that Glenn was ever that mean - he was better than Felix at swords, and sometimes he swiped Felix’s favorite cheesy biscuits at breakfast or made fun of his hair; a thousand things that felt enormous to a child who just wanted to impress his brother. 

Even then his father didn’t really know how to comfort Felix in a language he could understand. As a child Felix was too soft and sensitive and quick to tears for his father to handle, until he abruptly hardened into a spiked-shell exterior and didn’t let anyone get close enough to try. Regrets come spilling back, despite all of Felix’s best efforts to view his father’s room as just an empty space holding the possessions of the dead. Because his father should have apologized, at least, for telling Felix he’d rather have a dead, honorable son than two living children. Felix might have been able to forgive him, if his father had ever bothered to talk about Glenn’s death as something painful and avoidable instead of a proud necessity. 

At least there are no portraits of Glenn here. There are no portraits at all, except one picture of the family from when Felix was barely able to stand on his own, a wide-eyed child supported grudgingly by a brother who was grumpy about the idea of playing nice with a baby who was still getting used to walking and talking. Felix lets that portrait remain on the wall. 

The wardrobe is first and least. Clothing goes into a pile for the servants to pick through, repurpose and distribute. None of it is Felix’s size, and just using his father’s study feels strange enough without wearing his father’s clothing as well. He keeps a scarf in the Fraldarius colors, warm and woolen, that he remembers his father wearing through winters at the far edge of his memory. 

The desk and cabinet are harder. There’s an entire stack of letters sent between his father and the old king, spanning years and years. They’re tied with a silver cord and left in a box engraved with a symbol Felix doesn’t recognize, and he makes it through exactly one sentence of “My dearest Rodrigue” before deciding he’s absolutely not equipped to handle whatever the king put in hundreds of private letters to the duke.

There are plenty of mementos, wedding gifts and letters and the belongings of a mother that Felix doesn’t remember meeting. A few tokens of Glenn, as he expected; a locket with strands of dark hair, a coat shoved to the back of the closet, a cameo tucked in a drawer. 

There’s nothing of Felix, except an old book about Loog he used to read over and over. 

Felix holds it for a long time, hunched on the floor of the room, tracing the embossed cover and fraying spine. It goes in a small pile of things to be kept, with the box of letters and Glenn’s lock of hair and a warm winter scarf. 

The rest can be disposed of, as far as Felix is concerned. The servants can air the room out and replace the sheets, finally make it livable for the new duke. 

It’s ready the next day, emptied and stripped of everything except one drawer’s worth of sentiment. Felix sleeps there that night, as much as you can call what he’s doing sleeping - sleep has always been hard to come by, and the absence of Sylvain’s warm breath and sprawling limbs makes it harder. He stays, almost to taunt himself, to see just how many unwanted memories will come haunting back. But it’s only the usual nightmares about endless corpses and a monster wading through a bloody moat. All of Fraldarius is tainted in the same way for him; all of Fodlan is ruined with memories of battle. Or perhaps it’s only Felix and the fear he carries just above his heart. 

* * *

Sylvain doesn’t return in the following days, and Felix reminds himself that three weeks is far too short for a round trip combined with any stay in Gautier. Sylvain has responsibilities to attend to, and Felix tries not to admit that he looks up hopefully every time someone knocks on his door. 

The thought of Sylvain sent out to slaughter his way through monsters and bandits, used again as an instrument of killing, burns a pit through his stomach and into his dreams. Letting Sylvain leave alone was a _ mistake _. Whatever Sylvain might think about himself, Felix knows he’s made for the sorts of long negotiations that are won by wit and words, not for battle. 

Someone else does come, exactly twenty-two days after Sylvain rode off into the sunrise, heralded by a guard who sheepishly knocks on Felix’s study door while he’s writing a third letter to a collective of textile merchants in Derdriu. 

“Sorry for the interruption, Your Grace,” the guard says, “but two women have moved into the abandoned church to the west. They’re refusing to leave.”

“What?” Felix snaps, squinting at the guard. One of these days he’s going to get around to learning the names of everyone who works at Fraldarius manor, but so far he’s only managed the servants in closest proximity to his study. 

“Uh, as I said, two women moved into the abandoned church. They say they’re planning to start an orphanage.”

“What,” Felix says. He pictures the building the guard must be referring to, a crumbling old thing with rotting timbers and shattered windows. “That place is falling apart. It’s not safe for anyone.”

“They say they’re friends of yours. They asked me to give you this,” the guard replies with the air of someone telling a lord something they know won’t be received well, and hands Felix a sealed letter.

Felix has a very clear suspicion as to who would move into an abandoned building barely an hours walk from Fraldarius manor with the intention of turning it into an orphanage. He determinedly does _ not _ snap at the guard; it’s not his fault that Felix’s friends are all stubborn idiots. 

“I’m going to check on this. Let anyone who comes by know that I’m out taking care of something.” Felix sweeps past the guard, who snaps a hasty salute. 

Less than an hour later he rides up to an abandoned, crumbling church, which honestly is a hazard to the health of anyone who steps into it. 

“Mercedes!” he yells as soon as he storms through the front door. It’s unnecessary. Mercedes is sitting right there at a rickety table, writing notes with one hand and delicately nibbling a cookie she holds in the other. Annette sits further inside the room, and is already glaring at Felix. Typical. 

“Oh, Felix!” Mercedes said, neither surprised nor upset. “It’s so lovely to see you again. I assume you received our invitation?” 

“What?” he says, and doesn’t even bother to voice a complete question, or anything more specific than “what are you _ doing _?”

“At the moment we’re having tea and discussing a few plans,” Mercedes says, sweetness and light in the face of Duke Fraldarius storming into her living room. 

“Yeah, we’re working on things,” Annette chimes in from the far side of Mercedes. “What do you think _ you’re _ doing? It’s rude to yell at people.” 

“This is my building,” Felix says stupidly, because things stopped making sense about five minutes ago. “It’s a condemned Fraldarius building. It’s rude to move into other people’s buildings,” he says, glaring at Annette. 

“We did intend to discuss the matter with you over tea, but you arrived slightly before we expected. I’m afraid I didn’t have time to make anything other than cookies.” Mercedes nods at the unread note he’s still gripping in one hand. 

“It’s definitely rude to not read the very polite messages people send you before showing up in their living rooms,” Annette says.

Felix is starting to feel more than a little ganged up on. “Hold on,” Felix says, trying to regain control of the situation. “This place is about to collapse. A guard just told me some idiots were trying to move into the rotting church. What was I supposed to do?” 

“You were supposed to arrive for tea at the time we invited you,” Mercedes says.

“Forget about the tea!” 

“I knew we shouldn’t have bothered with a letter, Mercie,” Annette says glumly. “It was on the nice paper too, but noooo, he just ran down here without even bothering to read it. Felix,” she says, going from sadness to adorable, kitten-like anger in about half a second, “you’re -” 

“-evil? An asshole? Inconsiderate of other people’s feelings?” Felix finishes for her. 

“I was just going to say completely rude! Again.” Annette says, but the wind seems to have gone out of her sails. 

“Look, I’ll read your damn note now if it means so much to you,” Felix says, because the whole conversation still seems quite out of control and Annette looks equal parts sad and angry. He unrolls the neat little letter. It’s short, just a neat little note inviting him to tea and a light discussion about a possible orphanage in Fraldarius territory the next day. There’s a cheery little doodle at the bottom of Annette and Mercedes holding up a heaping tray of sweets; they look like cinnamon buns, but someone’s added a label that reads “cheesy pepper popovers!!!”. 

“So I’m early. I wouldn’t be able to make the actual time anyway - I have a meeting with some farmers tomorrow afternoon.” He pauses, examining the note again. The little doodle at the bottom is so very Annette that he nearly laughs. “...I like your drawing, Annette.”

“Oh, how sad,” Mercedes says. “I suppose I can have some pastries delivered to the castle, but it’s such a shame you won’t be able to share them with us.” 

“Forget about the pastries,” Felix says, because it’s bad enough that all of the political representatives he meets are obsessed with formality without it spreading to Annette and Mercedes as well. “I’m drowning in the stuff. I can’t ask anyone a simple question without being offered a three-course meal. Look, we can talk now, okay?” 

“I suppose,” Annette says grudgingly. “But we were going to do this properly,” she adds like it’s somehow Felix’s fault. 

“It stopped being _ proper _ when you moved into a -” he bites back the rest of his words. “Whatever. Explain already,” he says, flopping down into a half-rotted chair in a very improper manner.

“You go ahead, Annette. I want to finish writing this before I forget what I was saying.” Mercedes gestures to the piece of paper she was intently working on when Felix first interrupted her. 

“But Mercie! It was your plan. You can’t just make me explain it to Felix all by myself!” Annette grudgingly turns to face Felix despite her protests. “If you yell I’m going to excalibur you through the wall.” 

He glares at Mercedes, who must be doing this on purpose because she _ knows _ Felix has never in his life managed to be angry at Annette. “Fine. You split off from the army before we even made it to Fhirdiad, so what are you doing _ here _?”

Annette takes a thoughtful sip of a cup of tea that’s no doubt gone cold. “Mercedes and I planned to start an orphanage in southwest Faerghus, near the border of the old Empire. We thought that was where the fewest resources were stretched over the most people. But the situation in Gaspard and Rowe was much better than we expected. It seems like the territories that led the resistance are actually in the worst situation. So that’s, you know, the western fronts of Blaiddyd, Fraldarius, and Gautier. Soooo,” she finishes up with a winning smile, “we changed our plans and decided to help out our wonderful friend.”

Felix had suspected that his own territory was hit hardest by the war. Having outside confirmation is briefly vindicating and then deeply, painfully worrying. “And you’re planning to do what exactly to help out your wonderful friend?” 

“The churches are doing everything they can to help the orphans, but most of them are overburdened. We can set up a few homes and work on coordinating resource distribution and locating families willing to take in children.” 

It seems like a reasonable plan, not that Felix knows anything about orphanages - it’s been lower on his to-do list, under _ don’t mortally offend any powerful merchant associations _ and _ keep your entire territory from starving _. 

“I suppose I could use the help,” he says grudgingly. It’s only Annette; she’s the most helpful person on the continent. 

“Really?” Annette says, completely surprised that Felix isn’t actually an asshole. He should probably feel insulted about that. 

“I already said yes. You can’t use _ this _ building, though.” 

“But it’s such a convenient location! It’s only an hour away from your castle, and it’s within easy distance of several other towns, _ and _ it has a lovely big garden for growing food.” 

“And it’s about to collapse, Annette,” Felix says, and it’s like they think he’s being unhelpful on purpose. “We can’t run around repairing ancient buildings when there are plenty of unoccupied ones that aren’t mostly rotted.” 

Annette squints at him. “Technically, as the duke, you could absolutely have it repaired if you wanted to help us.” 

“We’re having an orphan problem because half of the adults in Fraldarius are _ dead _. We’re trading for food because half the fields haven’t been planted in four years,” he snaps. “What, I’m supposed to assign a crew of farmers and fishers to repair a condemned building so you can have a convenient location?” He’s probably yelling, and Felix hopes that Annette wasn’t too serious about her threat to throw him through the wall. 

“I believe I understand your concerns,” Mercedes steps in before Annette can try to murder him. “We’re willing to move if you point us toward a more reasonable building.” 

“Good.” Felix stands up. He’s not in the mood for tea and conversation anymore. “Come back to the manor with me. I’ll introduce you to some people.” 

“Uh, right now?” Annette asks. 

“Yes, right now. I have meetings tomorrow. Bring your things, I’m not letting you stay here.” 

Annette shrugs, thankfully, and gathers up a small bag of possessions. Mercedes packs equally quickly and they trail back toward Fraldarius manor, Mercedes and Annette chatting cheerfully and Felix remaining stubbornly silent. True to his word they stop by a few places; a church that’s been spearheading the effort of finding and caring for orphans, a food distribution center, and back at the manor they stop by the keeper of records. Felix directs them to help Mercedes and Annette with any requests, within reason.

“There was one more thing,” Mercedes says as Felix guides them to their guest quarters. Apparently they’re sharing a room these days; he didn’t ask for the details. 

“What?” He’s already given them blanket permission to coordinate relief efforts in his territory, what more could they need?

Mercedes rummages through her bag. “Oh, I do hope I haven’t lost it,” she muses. “Annette, do you remember where I put the letter?” 

“It’s in the little waterproof pouch. No, the other one. To the left,” Annette instructs while Mercedes pats her way through every one of the apparently endless pouches on her bag. 

“Ah! There it is.” She hands an envelope to Felix. It’s addressed to Duke Fraldarius in gold embossing, and the return address is Fhirdiad. 

“What am I supposed to do with this?” It’s a letter. Felix knows exactly what one does with letters, but he doesn’t want to read a letter that must come from Dimitri. There are already a few scrolls on his desk penned in Dimitri’s handwriting; he opens them and scans through just to check whether the king needs anything from him, and then leaves them there in their own little pile. He doesn’t throw them away, and he doesn't respond. 

“Promise you’ll read it and send a response,” Annette says, looking profoundly unhappy. “We stopped by Fhirdiad on the way here. His Majesty thinks you haven’t been reading his letters.” 

“Of course I’m reading them.” They’re all full of meaningless things, memories and apologies and ideas for the future. Felix wants to rip apart each one he gets. 

“Well, respond to this one. I’ll know if you don’t,” Annette says. It’s definitely a threat. 

Felix sighs. “Fine,” he says, because he really has never been able to say no to Annette, and also because she could blast him through the stone walls of the manor. “I’ll respond, okay?” 

The letter taunts him while he goes through that afternoon’s paperwork. Finally he opens it, once it’s clear he’s out of things he could argue are more important than a missive from the king. 

It’s shorter than the others he’s received, less formal, and penned in Dimitri’s perfect handwriting. 

_ My dear friend, _

_ Although the war has only just come to an end I already feel that I am losing touch with the state of my country, and with you. I plan to visit every region of Fodlan, acquainting myself with their people and needs. My advisors are concerned by the idea, but I believe it will only serve to raise moral and benefit our reconstruction efforts, and I will be surrounded by capable protectors regardless of whether I’m in Fhirdiad or traveling. _

_ With your consent, I plan to visit Fraldarius first, both as a relatively quick journey to reassure my advisors and because nothing would please me more than seeing you in person. _

_ Please respond, Felix. _

_ With my greatest respect, _

_ Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd _

* * *

“Fuck,” Felix says, with great feeling. It’s been a whole month since he left Dimitri at the gates of Fhirdiad. He supposes that he’s already at the outer limits of how long a duke can ignore messages from a king. 

He supposes he can bear to see Dimitri, just for an afternoon. 

Felix flips the note over. 

_ Fine. We’ll have tea. -Felix _

He hands it off to a messenger heading back to Fhirdiad before he can talk himself into ripping the thing up and never looking at Dimitri’s name again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this house we love Mercedes Fireemblem.
> 
> This is sort of a weird in-between chapter, but sometimes you just need to make your main character sort through his dead father's belongings and then set up a couple plot things. Sylvain's back in the next chapter, and not gonna lie I'm pretty excited about the rest of this fic.
> 
> I cannot believe this thing just got to 5000 hits. Thank you all so much. As always you should definitely comment about anything that you particularly liked or hated, and you can find me at thecaryatid on twitter and tumblr.


	13. Reunion

Sylvain is gone for six weeks, down to the day. Felix knows; he’s counting up the hours Sylvain’s been gone, calculating travel time between their territories, trying to forget how long it would take for Fraldarius to receive news of the Gautier heir’s untimely death. Life falls into an unpleasant rhythm of weighing the hours he’s spent without Sylvain against the days until Dimitri arrives, reworking the numbers again and again between every letter he sends and each meeting he sits through. The rhythm’s broken occasionally by the meals and tea parties Annette and Mercedes insistently invite him to, but nothing interrupts it for long. 

Felix feels scattered. Nobility doesn’t agree with him, and too few people are willing to _ disagree _ with him. Everything is so different from school and war, where almost everyone seemed comfortable critiquing the highest-ranking nobles on the continent. The advisors he inherited express polite disapproval on occasion, but it’s a trial untangling the differences between vague contempt and preference for tradition from the occasional opinion that one of Felix’s plans would honestly be a disaster.

But six weeks after Sylvain rode north there’s an insistent knocking on Felix’s study door. It bursts open before he can even get up, although in six weeks no one has barged uninvited into Duke Fraldarius’s private study. A redheaded blur crashes into the room before Felix can form a question, and then Sylvain’s grinning down at him, leaning over the desk and dripping rain onto Felix’s paperwork. 

The first thing Felix says after six weeks of worry is “Sylvain!”, annoyed and relieved, shoving half-written letters out of the line of fire. 

Sylvain laughs, warm and true, like he’s been spent every moment they were apart waiting to laugh at Felix’s fond annoyance.

“Come on, you missed me,” he says, circling around to grab Felix bodily by the shoulders and haul him out of his chair into an enormous hug. 

He’s unshaven, dripping with sweat and rainwater, and smells like he hasn’t bathed in about a month. He’s armored, the Lance of Ruin slung across his back. Sharp metal edges poke through Felix’s soft tunic, and the joints of gauntletted hands scrape over his shoulders. Felix goes easily anyway, letting himself be gathered uncomfortably against the cold, unyielding armor around Sylvain’s warmth. 

“Shit, armor,” Sylvain remembers, shoving Felix away a little more carefully than he dragged him in. “Hey, help me out with this,” he says, unbuckling gauntlets and starting to tug awkwardly at straps.

It creates another crack in Felix’s heart, the thought that Sylvain’s been living in his armor so much that he’d forgotten he was wearing it. Felix obliges, working at the straps and carelessly dropping plates of armor to the study floor. 

“So you’re back,” Felix says. 

“Couldn’t keep me away if you wanted to,” Sylvain says, dropping the last piece of armor and then gathering them all into a pile in the corner. He’s always been more careful than Felix about things like that. He leans the inert Lance of Ruin against a bookcase before crossing over to the fireplace and groaning, stretching his shoulders back. Felix hears a few pops as Sylvain works out the tension of hours of riding. “It’s so good to be out of that armor,” Sylvain moans like it’s some filthy thing. 

Felix steps up next to him. “I missed you,” he says to Sylvain, because surely he can manage that level of admission. 

“Awww, you admitted it,” Sylvain says, and Felix finds himself dragged into a hug that doesn’t involve a layer of metal plates.

It ought to be horrible. Sylvain smells like days of travel cooped up in armor. He’s grimy, stained by dirt and sweat. Sylvain himself must be miserable, considering how careful he is about cleanliness. Felix relaxes into the hug anyway, even though his own clothes will probably need to be washed just from the grime they’re soaking up. 

“Mmmmm. I missed you too,” Sylvain sighs against Felix’s ear like he’s telling a secret and then holds him a little tighter until Felix’s hands are gripping at the greasy cloth between Sylvain’s shoulder blades and he’s pressing his face into the hollow of Sylvain’s neck and breathing deep, not caring about the sweat and mud and - blood? Is that blood, oozing in a few places, barely visible against dark fabric?

Felix grabs at the hem of Sylvain’s shirt and wrenches it up, ignoring Sylvain’s surprised grunt. “You’re bleeding,” he says, glaring at scraped, bruised skin that looks like it’s half-healed and broken apart a dozen times, blood oozing through dark, scattered scabs. It’s an accusation. 

“Hey, hey, it’s not that bad. I got tossed around a little by a giant wolf a few days ago, right? It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” Sylvain rolls his eyes like standing in Felix’s study and bleeding right in front of him should be unremarkable. 

And it was, during the war, when they all lived in their armor and spent days killing until the battles bled together. Sylvain took a few too many blows that were meant for Felix, and Felix always had a habit of overextending by himself and getting badly hurt up before he could retreat to safety. 

They aren’t at war anymore. Bandits, wolves, and border skirmishes are all routine. There’s no real reason for Sylvain to be standing here unhealed, presenting himself to Felix as though it doesn’t _ matter _that he’s hurt and exhausted. 

“Idiot,” Felix says, with too much pain and not enough anger. He raises his hands, shaping the glyphs of a basic healing spell. He was always terrible at faith magic but even he can soften the marks of careless abrasions from Sylvain’s skin. 

“You can’t have run out of vulneraries. Why didn’t you see a healer?” Felix squints at his handiwork. The bruise is still there, but the skin has knitted closed. He pats at Sylvain, feeling for the telltale roughness of dried blood. Sylvain’s always worn dark red under his armor, perfect for disguising bloodstains. It’s been years since Felix thought that was a coincidence. 

“Sit down,” he snaps at Sylvain. “Let me heal these.” Felix shoves Sylvain towards an overstuffed chair a little more roughly than he should.

Sylvain stays right where he is, in front of the fire, squinting as though he has any right to be confused. “Nah, I’ll get dirt on the upholstery. I told you not to worry about me.” 

“The upholst- who cares about the upholstery?” Felix is about to voice some stupid threat about knocking Sylvain out and dragging him to the infirmary, but Sylvain unexpectedly gives in all at once. He frowns over at the chair Felix is pushing him towards. It’s a nice chair, warm and inviting in a plush dark blue fabric, but fabric is replaceable. 

“Okay, Felix,” Sylvain says, sitting down. His smile looks fragile. “Guess there’s no point trying to hide things from you.”

Felix is not great at emotions but he’s known Sylvain for a lifetime, and he knows what Sylvain looks like when he’s fighting back some inconvenient feeling. Whatever Felix might have done about Sylvain’s latest worryingly unreadable expression is lost when Sylvain strips off his shirt, hissing when the fabric catches against some unseen hurt. It really does look like some monster tried its best to bludgeon him to death, and Felix’s hands clench around the ghost of a sword at the thought of Sylvain alone in the wilderness, facing down a threat with no one to guard his blindspots and cover for his weaknesses. 

Margrave Gautier has always tried to make his son face down threats all alone, like Sylvain’s only worth comes from his lance and his blood. Back at the academy the professor never allowed it, and during the war Felix backed him up whenever possible. Why did Felix let him go alone this time?

“Again with the staring,” Sylvain says where he’s sitting hunched forward on the chair. “And you called _ me _ insatiable.” The curve of his smile takes the sting out of his words. 

“Go see a healer,” Felix says again, stepping closer to examine the bruises shadowing Sylvain’s torso. Mercedes is in town, settled into a large farmhouse filled with infirmary beds and too many children. She’d know what to do about whatever wounds lurk under Sylvain’s skin. 

“Thought I was,” Sylvain teases. “You just cast a good healing spell.” But his eyes are serious where he’s staring up. Perhaps, just for now, letting Sylvain out of his sight would hurt more than letting a few injuries go untreated. 

“Fine. You can see one tomorrow,” Felix says, perching himself on the edge of Sylvain’s chair and grasping at another healing spell. “Show me where you’re hurt.” 

Sylvain’s laugh is warm and rich, better than perfectly-spiced hot chocolate with just the right amount of bitterness. He guides Felix’s hand to a particularly angry bruise an inch from his heart. 

“Think I bruised a few ribs. Do you have enough juice to heal them?” He presses Felix’s hand against it as Felix takes the space of five breaths to forget every healing spell he’s ever learned and then gradually remember, drawing sigils together and channeling them deep into Sylvain’s muscle and bone. 

Sylvain actually moans as Felix watches the flesh under his hand lose its tender, inflamed look. He healed on the battlefield occasionally, as anyone with a drop of magic talent did, but he’s sure this spell is far better than anything he managed under their professor’s tutelage. 

“Goddess,” Sylvain says, slumping over until his forehead is pressed into Felix’s side. “I hope you have a few more of those.” 

He doesn’t point Felix toward any other wounds, so he reaches for an abrasion that looks like it’s been oozing through dry-cracking scabs for days. He takes his time crafting another spell. Felix never had much use for faith, not in the goddess or her church, not in family or authority. In the quiet of his study with Sylvain curled against him in relief, Felix finds a glimmer of faith he never knew he had. There’s another glow of light, another perfect spell, another relieved groan from Sylvain. 

“Didn’t know you were working on your faith,” Sylvain grins up at Felix. “You’re all the healer I need right now.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix snaps, but he presses a third spell to the bruise over Sylvain’s kidney and can’t hide his smile at Sylvain’s answering sigh. 

“Where else are you hurt?” There are plenty of bruises left, but none of them look like the sort of bone-fracturing pain Felix has already healed. Sylvain grabs Felix’s hand again and moves it up to his hair, probing until Felix feels dried blood rough against Sylvain’s scalp. 

“You really are a fool. You were probably concussed.” Sylvain doesn’t bother to deny it, and Felix breathes in, out, reaching for that new seed of faith in his heart. This spell is the best of all of them, skin knitting together smooth under his fingers. 

“Mmmm,” Sylvain says, slumping further and wrapping both of his arms around Felix’s waist. 

Felix allows it. He doesn’t even remove his hand from Sylvain’s hair, stroking gently and feeling flakes of dried blood come loose, drinking in Sylvain’s sighs. 

“Anywhere else?” He finally asks, when Sylvain clearly isn't going to volunteer any more information about his wounds. 

“Just a few bruises. They don’t need a healing spell, but you could kiss them better.” 

“No,” Felix says. He keeps petting Sylvain’s bright, bloodied hair anyway. Carefully, slowly, he uses his other hand to stroke the textured curve of Sylvain’s spine.

Sylvain’s chuckle is warm and resonant where the warmth of his breath and the heavy thud of his heart press against Felix. 

“You smell like you haven’t bathed in a month,” Felix says. Sylvain smells like leagues and leagues of hard riding and worse fighting, caked mud and rank sweat mingling with salty-iron blood. 

“It’s been pretty close to that,” Sylvain admits, words muffled by Felix’s shoulder. “There aren’t a lot of hot baths on the road.”

Felix sighs. He’d suspected Sylvain had left Gautier in a hurry. “You didn’t even stop by your castle on the way here.” 

“It’s not really my castle, you know? All that focus on stabbing things isn’t my style,” Sylvain says, voice so light it must be a lie. As if Sylvain isn’t the third most brutal thing on the battlefield, after Dimitri and Felix himself, as if the Lance of Ruin isn’t leaning docile against Felix’s bookcase. “I’ll send a messenger. Had to get here before they decided to send some fancy advisor to babysit you, right?” 

“I see. So you’re only here to keep me from fucking things up,” Felix says. The words are bitter but his tone is wry. 

“You said it, not me.” Sylvain finally lifts his head from its comfortable perch on Felix’s shoulder, grinning lazy up at him. “They’re not going to disown me, they’re not brave enough to provoke Fraldarius, and I’m close enough to Gautier that I can come running if they have more bandit problems. What’s the problem?” 

“You’re planning to stay.” 

“Uh, yeah, unless you kick me out. You’re not cruel enough to kick me out, are you, Felix?” 

It should be easy to disentangle fake hurt from real fear, but Felix’s lungs tighten when he can’t find the seam between teasing and apprehension in Sylvain’s voice. “Not if you take a bath and see a healer tomorrow,” Felix says, and Sylvain’s arms press closer around him. 

“Always so demanding. But fine, fine,” Sylvain says, as though Felix is asking some unreasonable favor. “We’ll go take that bath.” 

“We? I don’t smell like ten leagues of sweat,” Felix says. 

Sylvain sniffs theatrically. “You probably do now. This gunk really clings to anything. Come on, I’ll let you wash my hair.” 

“You say that as though it’s a convincing argument.” It’s a very convincing argument, having Sylvain vulnerable and unpolished in front of him. 

Sylvain tilts his head up against the hand that Felix has left idly toying with his hair. “Sort of seems like you’re already interested, so yeah, I think it’ll convince you. Come on, you’re not going to let me out of your sight when I’m _ wounded_, are you?”

And Felix isn’t, he really isn’t, not now he’s spent six weeks cursing himself for letting Sylvain leave in the first place. He’ll keep Sylvain where he can guard his blindspots, heal his wounds, bundle him far out of reach of the coldest nights of the north. 

“Fine. Only because you won’t stop bothering me,” Felix says, slipping to his feet and heading toward his private bath - one of the few true perks of being a duke. Sylvain is right, anyway; he does need a bath.

* * *

As always - as _ always_, these days, even though it’s only been three months since Enbarr and almost half that time has been spent with Sylvain off getting himself hurt - Sylvain strips down immediately, leaving his pants and boots to join his already-abandoned shirt. For once he doesn’t take the time to leave his clothes in a tidy pile. Felix is sure he should be worried about that. Sylvain just sinks into the bath the moment the water is deep enough, actually whimpering at the sting and soothe of hot water against tender skin. 

And as always these days Felix stares, letting his eyes trace the shape of Sylvain’s thighs and hips and the muscles of his chest like he’s still too cowardly to do with his hands.

Sylvain winks and leans back with his arms lazily spread and the water obscuring everything below his chest. Already he looks better than when he stumbled in an hour ago, walking tired and bleeding slow, as though Felix himself is a source of all the things Sylvain needs to survive. 

“Come on, you have to take care of me. I’m hurt,” Sylvain whines, but he’s smiling with his head lolling back against the edge. 

Felix complies anyway. Sylvain deserves good things, after all, and perhaps right now Felix can be one of them. 

There’s a familiar admiration in Sylvain’s eyes while Felix tosses his own clothes into a pile. The bath is big enough to fit two people, even if they are tall and sprawling. But Sylvain’s watching so expectantly that Felix steps gently over to within arms reach. 

“You were hugging me. I liked it,” Sylvain says petulantly and reaches out to Felix, hand stopping just shy of his shoulder. He waits, arm outstretched, even though Felix is within easy grabbing range. 

When Felix finally slips forward through the water he hooks his arms hesitantly around Sylvain’s shoulders. It’s hard to remain hesitant when Sylvain presses forward as soon as he has permission, sliding deeper into the water and hunching until he can fit his head under Felix’s chin. His hands tuck themselves around the contours of Felix’s waist. He’s trembling.

No one taught Felix to comfort, not even by example. But he was doing this just minutes ago, eased by the relief of reunion and the warmth of the fire. So Felix slips one hand back into Sylvain’s hair and resumes tracing the curve of Sylvain’s spine with the other, calloused palm gliding and catching on a map of scars. 

The trembling stops, turns into measured breathing. Finally Sylvain tilts his head, nosing a little closer. “You’re good with your hands,” he says. 

Felix sighs. He stops stroking Sylvain’s back. Sylvain makes a quizzical, needy sound, curling up closer as if to compensate. 

“Stop that,” Felix says, half at Sylvain’s words and half at the way he’s still acting like Felix might leave him to fend for himself. 

In the war and at the academy people always criticized Felix for not accepting help. Seteth and Byleth chided him for not relying on his friends, for being too independent and arrogant. They weren’t wrong, of course. Felix has always been more comfortable working alone. 

But Sylvain is in a league of his own when it comes to holding himself apart, trading easy smiles with his companions and never, ever relying on them. Even Felix can’t always tell when Sylvain is hurt, he’s so practiced at hiding it. And all things considered, between Miklan and the Margrave and the war, Sylvain has probably needed help for as long as Felix has known him. 

So having Sylvain curled up and transparently needy must mean one of two things. Either Sylvain arrived at Felix’s door so worn and tired that he would have crumpled into anyone’s arms like this, or Sylvain has decided that it’s safe for Felix specifically to see his pain.

Both are terrifying, in very different ways, and Felix isn’t remotely capable of asking about either possibility.

“What happened?” is the closest he can come, as he runs two gentling hands through Sylvain’s hair. They’re here to clean him up, at least nominally, so Felix picks up the soap and works it carefully through Sylvain’s hair. It’s worryingly matted with grease and grime. 

“The usual,” Sylvain says. The words are muffled by Felix’s skin, and he tries not to focus on how he can feel the movement of Sylvain’s lips. “Said hi to my dear old mother, got immediately sent off to deal with a whole list of problems, headed back here when I finished. The whole giant wolf thing took a while. I thought I’d be back a week ago.” 

Sylvain’s parents can’t possibly be trying to get him killed - they’re far too focused on their perfect little crest-blessed soldier for that. Still, the way they throw him at their problems makes Felix want to drain out Sylvain’s blood and replace it with something that doesn’t mark him as a Gautier. 

“You were sent all by yourself, I assume,” Felix says, tight with anger and trying not to show too much of it. 

He can feel Sylvain’s answering smile, wide and mirthless. “You know me, I’m a regular one-man army.” 

The grime is finally losing its grip on Sylvain’s hair. Felix pours water over it, carefully brushing trickles of soap from Sylvain’s eyes. He gives a delighted little moan as Felix still doesn't move his hands away, and the curl of Sylvain’s body against Felix starts to feel relaxed and indulgent instead of grasping and desperate. 

“They’re getting old. I’ll inherit soon,” Sylvain continues, ever the apparent optimist. 

“Not soon enough,” Felix says. Right now wouldn’t be soon enough; five years ago wouldn’t be soon enough. There is no _ soon enough _ for a timeline of getting Sylvain away from the grasping command of a family that uses him as a vessel for a weapon. “Take backup next time.” 

Sylvain grumbles something soft and contented that could be mistaken for agreement, but it’s probably just an attempt to avoid the topic. 

“I’m serious. Promise.” Felix tugs at Sylvain’s hair until he’s forced to look up. He makes a startled whine and Felix determinedly does not focus on it, does not fixate on every other way he could make Sylvain whimper. “Promise me you’ll stop throwing yourself at things like that. No matter what your parents say.” 

“It seems like we’ve been here before,” Sylvain says after a long, careful silence. 

“And yet you keep being a self-sacrificing fool.” 

“I can’t exactly take a Gautier battalion when I’m under strict orders to go alone,” Sylvain says, as though it’s a reasonable argument.

Felix knows that Sylvain is very smart. Sylvain’s the one who always liked fiddly little board games with too many rules, who read books and used to list off facts about Sreng until someone told him it was improper to be so interested in the history of a place he’s at war with. Skills come easily to him; people flock to him. Despite that, Sylvain is an idiot who’s blind to the most obvious things. 

“Take one of _ my _ battalions next time,” Felix says, tugging on Sylvain’s hair for punctuation and then regretting it as Sylvain whines and goes glassy-eyed for another second. 

“One of your -” Sylvain says once he recovers, like it isn’t the most obvious idea in the world, and then shifts into delighted smugness without pausing. “You’re so sweet, Felix, giving me one of your own battalions.” 

“I’m _ lending _ you one, and I’m not _ sweet_,” and the rest of Felix’s protest cuts off when Sylvain abruptly uncurls until he’s sitting tall enough to unceremoniously hook his chin over Felix’s head, reversing their positions. 

There’s a moment where Felix stiffens reflexively, and snaps an equally reflexive “get _ off _ me,” and Sylvain starts to pull away. But it’s just Sylvain, only Sylvain, and Felix has spent six weeks of long moments quietly vowing to keep Sylvain close. So he tucks his head more firmly under Sylvain’s chin and cuddles a little closer himself, awkwardly, filled with every comfortable sort of warmth and a few he’d rather not examine too closely.

Sylvain relaxes into startled laughter. “You know you give the worst mixed signals, right?” 

“Shut _ up_,” Felix says, because there’s no denying that one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant to get through three whole scenes in this chapter but got super lost in the yearning, oops. Two self-indulgent emotional bath scenes might be overkill for one fic, but please consider that they're very fun and excellent for the yearning.
> 
> As always thank you for reading, your comments give me life, and you can see me complain about fire emblem @thecaryatid.


	14. Teatime Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for aggressive flirting and more of Sylvain's bullshit internal monologue.

Waking up in a strange room isn’t exactly unusual territory for Sylvain. There’s a routine he’s followed every time he wakes up somewhere unfamiliar, starting when he was probably much too young. Blinking awake as slow as he can, yawning and stretching with careful laziness, taking in his surroundings while he still looks half-asleep. Reaching out, finally, for whatever warm body he went to bed with. 

This morning the theatrical stretching draws his attention to a whole collection of deep bruises over his ribcage. Bruises aren’t so rare, but these don’t seem like the sort he gets from enthusiastic sex. There’s no one lying beside him, he’s not hungover, and the room is decorated in familiar shades of blue. 

Right. Fraldarius blue. He’s in Felix’s bed in Felix’s new room in Felix’s territory. Which means all of those lovely dreams he’d been having about being healed and held by Felix probably weren’t dreams. 

Normally waking up in a strange room involves a few moments of soft comfort and then a whole avalanche of awkward regret. Today it’s the opposite; what a refreshing change. 

Standing up brings another string of sharp pains all through Sylvain’s torso. In retrospect he may have misled Felix about how deep some of those bruises went. Felix’s healing did wonders for his overall sense of aliveness and not-being-in-crippling-pain, but Felix isn’t a trained healer. 

Still, Felix’s hands on his chest, frowning down at Sylvain with that why-are-you-such-an-idiot look, calling up the best healing spell of his life and spilling just about every sort of warmth into Sylvain’s musculature? Definitely a memory he’s going to treasure forever. 

Felix healed him. Felix held him and scolded him for his carelessness and washed away a month of mud, forced him into a pair of pants that were comfortably loose on Felix and laughably tight on Sylvain, tugged him into bed and curled up against him like a cat, thoughtless and trusting. 

Huh. that’s… huh. Nice, sweet, adorable, romantic. It’s any number of adjectives that can’t do justice to the feeling of Felix’s hands in his hair and heartbeat under his ear.

Sylvain shoves open the bedroom door, a little louder than necessary. There’s Felix in what must be his favorite chair in his private sitting room, scowling down at some piece of paper. He’s already dressed, casual and comfortable in soft, warm tunic and pants a few shades lighter than his hair. 

“Eat something,” Felix snaps, barely looking up and gesturing towards a generous tray of food. There’s all of Felix’s favorites, meat and eggs. There’s also a nice selection of preserved fruits and a few sweet pastries. 

The food can wait a few minutes, even though Sylvain hasn’t eaten any meal in at least a day, and it’s been longer than that since a good, filling one. 

The chair Felix occupies is large and plush, covered in the dark blue fabric that house Fraldarius has always loved so much. It’s generously spacious for one person, but clearly not designed for two. There are several other chairs; there’s absolutely no reason for Sylvain to sit in this one. 

Except it’s where Felix is, and although he’s feeling ever so much better a few minutes of grumpy Felix cuddles would improve his life even more. 

“Good morning to you too,” Sylvain says, tugging the paper out of Felix’s hand and sitting down beside (and only a little bit on top) of him. Felix half hops up with a snarl; Sylvain hooks an arm around his waist and tugs him back down, until Sylvain’s lounging with his arms wrapped around Felix’s ribcage and his legs bracketing Felix’s entire body. Not tight or constricting, just holding. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, in his what-a-sentimental-idiot voice. 

Sylvain’s built a whole taxonomy of Felix’s tones and expressions over the years, differentiating annoyance and confusion from actual fear and anger. This one falls firmly into fond irritation, so Sylvain ignores it and pulls Felix a little closer, resting his forehead against the crown of Felix’s head and just appreciating the feel of Felix, warm and whole and only a little pissed off. 

“Something you wanted to say, Felix?” He teases, like he doesn’t know how Felix was about to tell him to stop fooling around and eat breakfast. 

He feels Felix’s sigh as a physical thing, a shift of the ribcage under his hands as Felix exhales every bit of breath he’s ever had in the face of Sylvain’s casual provoking. Which, nice. This whole thing where Sylvain can feel Felix’s breathing? Really nice. A laugh would be even better than a sigh, would feel so perfect resonating through Sylvain fingertips and into the drum of his heart. 

“Just eat breakfast,” Felix says, and doesn’t even bother with the _ stop fooling around _ bit, so that’s probably as good as enthusiastic approval. 

From this vantage point Sylvain has a perfect view of the back of Felix’s neck, and particularly of how it’s been pink with a blush since Sylvain pulled Felix closer and didn’t let go. It’s so endearing, how Felix tries so hard to hide his feelings but can never erase this particular tell. He wants to kiss it, see how bright he can make the blush go and how far it extends under Felix’s clothes. Does it turn the whole map of his skin glowing pink? Because, goddess, Sylvain wants to see that before he dies. 

Really, someone should give him a medal for the amount of self-control he’s exercising by not seriously attempting to seduce Felix right now. Felix needs time and a little space, and honestly? As long as Sylvain has this, the precious ability to insist on Felix’s hugs and attention, he’s not too upset. 

But flirting’s nice too, and that pretty blush is starting to fade from Felix’s skin, so. 

“What do you think of the beard?” Sylvain says right into Felix’s ear, and then nuzzles up against Felix’s cheek to demonstrate said beard. 

“What are you doing,” Felix hisses, but he’s still nice and relaxed against Sylvain’s chest. 

And there’s that blush again, and Sylvain watches closely this time as it spreads over Felix’s neck and up to his ears. 

“Making you blush,” Sylvain says with absolutely no shame. Felix turns to glare, irate and red-faced. All that accomplishes is letting Sylvain inspect him up close, scowl and flushed cheeks and wide eyes. It’s so unbearably cute; he definitely deserves a medal for not kissing the tip of Felix’s nose. But what’s life without the thrill of flirting with and subsequently getting stabbed by your best friend/emotionally constipated hopefully future lover?

“You’re cute when you blush,” Sylvain says, grinning right at Felix. “I mean, you’re always cute, but the blush is really… nice.” He feels his smile widening as he lets his eyes drop to the little bit of chest exposed by Felix’s shirt, which for once isn’t a turtleneck. It’s turning just as pink as Felix’s neck and face. So Felix probably blushes all over his torso, which - and Sylvain cannot possibly stress this enough - _ nice_. 

“Seriously though, what do you think of the beard?” Sylvain asks, partly because he likes this new gently flustered Felix, partly to preemptively interrupt Felix’s protests that he isn’t cute, and partly because he’s genuinely curious. He’s never grown out a beard before, and this one’s a little more unshaven than he’d keep it, but he doesn’t look bad. Sylvain looks a little older, a little softer, more dignified with the beard. 

And, also, in some hypothetical and hopefully not-too-distant future, the thought of Felix’s stomach and thighs a little scratched up from his beard is - not to repeat himself - _ so _nice, and maybe something he shouldn’t be thinking of with Felix sitting on his lap, so nope. Think less sexy things: snow, mud, mess.

He grabs Felix’s hand and guides it up to the beard, thoughtlessly. Felix doesn’t pull away, just lets his hand rest on Sylvain’s jaw and even strokes it a little, frowning in really intense concentration as he presumably thinks about how Sylvain’s beard might fit into his future. 

“I don’t hate it. It’s too overgrown,” Felix finally says, which is basically a ringing endorsement, right? 

“So you like it. You think it’s soooo sexy,” Sylvain says, because endangering his own life via provoking Felix isn’t a habit he’s willing to break.

And also, fuck, he’s both questioning and applauding the choices that led to this moment, because Felix is basically sitting in his lap and still caressing his jawline and looking at him with this nearly-invisible little smirk that he probably thinks Sylvain can’t see. And as a direct result of all of that, and also of his very poor ability to _ not _ think of things like Felix’s blush and calloused hands and really nice ass, well. Sylvain’s like halfway to a boner. 

If Felix notices he doesn’t say anything, and Sylvain is customarily shameless so why even bother being embarrassed? 

Still, Felix’s smirk is widening into something uncharacteristically open. It’s an expression that isn’t cataloged in Sylvain’s expansive Felix lexicon, and it’s so damn beautiful that it strikes him dumb. 

“It is not,” and Sylvain can hear the disdain gathering in Felix’s pause, “sexy.” 

“Then why are you staring at me, Fe? Seems like you found something to admire. Do you just like my face that much?” Sylvain heaps all of the sweetness he can into his voice. He barely stops himself from calling Felix _ sweetheart _, because he’s not quite that ready to be stabbed to death. 

“Since when do you blush, Sylvain?” Felix hasn’t moved at all, is still curled up pressed between Sylvain legs and against his chest, is smirking that tempting smirk from a distance that’s too close for safety and not nearly as close as Sylvain wishes it was. 

Sylvain, as a rule, does not blush. He hasn’t been a blushing virgin in over a decade, and even then he’s sure he didn’t blush much at all. But Felix really only lies about his own emotions, and he’s still staring with the sweetest, most infuriatingly smug smile Sylvain has ever seen. 

Goddess, he wants to lean a little closer and kiss Felix until neither of them can breathe. Goddess.

“Oh, I only blush for you.” It’s absolute bullshit and also the complete truth. Funny how that works out sometimes. Anyone would get flustered under the full force of Felix’s gaze, those precise features and clear eyes amplifying his regard into something heavy and ice-sharp. 

Felix laughs, and Sylvain finally - _ finally _\- feels the way it resonates through his chest. But then Felix slips away, extricates himself before he can be grabbed back and held more securely in the circle of Sylvain’s arms. He steps over to retrieve the papers Sylvain had left forgotten on the table. Even that movement is graceful as a dancer, graceful as a swordmaster, graceful as the lights that weave through the northern sky. 

“Did you leave any clothes in your old room?”

Sylvain shrugs. It seems likely enough. “I’ve left clothes in a lot of rooms,” and maybe he’s a little more out of it than he thought, because that one was definitely a bad idea. 

“Of course you have.” Felix’s voice goes opaque and then cuts off before he actually insults Sylvain - or, like, lists several devastating observations and then calls him an idiot, because Felix never really stops at one insult, and he rarely bothers with insults that aren’t true. It must take a huge amount of self-restraint, and maybe Sylvain should get Felix a medal for that one. With _ trying really hard to be less of an asshole _ engraved on it. The expression on Felix’s face would be worth the stabbing. 

“In any case,” Felix says, voice still hard like he’s imagining opening a few of Sylvain’s veins, “l’ll see about finding you something to wear.”

“Hey, hey, I can take care of it,” Sylvain protests, trying to smooth things over. 

“I’m not going to let you wander around my manor in _ that _. And I have other matters I should attend to, anyway.” 

It’s probably a fair point. Walking around in only Felix’s overly-tight pants would send a very specific message to the world.

“Fine,” Sylvain sighs, craning around toward the door to check exactly what expression Felix is wearing. Frown, glare, furrowed brow - generic pissed-offness. Not too terrible. 

“I’ll stay here and eat all of your food,” he says, stretching out theatrically - ow, bruises - and grabbing one of the sweeter-looking pastries. It’s as good as food in Faerghus ever is, which means it has a flavor and probably won’t break any of his teeth. 

“That’s what I’ve been telling you to do,” Felix says. The _ you contemptible fool _is strongly implied. 

“But hugging my favorite person is so much more important than breakfast, Felix.” Sylvain’s ravenous now that he’s started eating. Still, he doesn’t regret a second that he’d spent curled up with Felix. He’d trade all the pastries on the plate for another five minutes with Felix in his lap. 

“If you haven’t eaten by the time I’m back I’ll knock you out and drag you to a healer,” Felix says like Sylvain’s last sentence didn’t exist. It probably contained a little too much emotional vulnerability to be acknowledged. 

“I’ll be good, I promise,” Sylvain says with a wink, even though the thought of Felix tossing him over a shoulder and carrying him across town is incredibly tempting. 

* * *

There are, in fact, years-old clothes that Sylvain left in his own room. They’re probably too tight by now. Felix feels a little stab of satisfaction as he gathers them up; if Sylvain wanted to have properly fitted clothes he should have planned out his hasty return a bit better. 

At least he looks alive this morning, and more than lucid enough to direct his flirting toward Felix for some awful, inscrutable, completely obvious reason. Felix takes a few minutes in the old guest room to breathe, until he recovers from having Sylvain pressed firm against his back.

_ I have things to do _ was half a lie. Felix cleared his morning for dragging Sylvain to a healer, and he’s mentally adding an hour for venting to Annette. There are always things to do, of course, but nothing will completely collapse over the course of a rare morning taken for himself. 

He tries not to think about how they’ll venture into town, where Sylvain will have other targets for his flirting. There’s nothing to be jealous of. Absolutely nothing, regardless of how he feels when Sylvain drags him into more of those too-eager hugs, regardless of how knowingly Sylvain grins when he pulls Felix into his lap, regardless of how he’s apparently decided he likes to make Felix _ blush_. The incorrigible, insatiable bastard, who Felix absolutely does not want to pin against a wall until Sylvain swears he’ll only ever tease Felix like that. 

When Felix returns, Sylvain is still munching through an entire tray of food with the single-minded intensity of a man realizing he hasn’t eaten nearly enough recently. So Felix throws the whole bundle of clothes directly at his head. They’re soft; Sylvain will be fine. 

Sylvain drops the pastry he’s been eating and looks down in such abject dismay that Felix openly laughs at him, and then gets to watch Sylvain, scattered with crumbs and with a bundle of fabric in his lab, go from dismay to delight at the sound of Felix’s mirth. 

“I don’t remember being this small.” Sylvain holds up a shirt critically. It’s such a stupid exaggeration. 

“Shut up and get dressed,” Felix says, in lieu of telling Sylvain that his pretend puzzlement is a disgrace. 

Sylvain does, right in the middle of the room _ again_, before Felix can think of looking away. Not that he would; not that he wants to miss another glimpse of Sylvain’s thighs. Still, it would be polite of Sylvain to offer. 

“Healer. Come _ on_,” Felix says as soon as Sylvain’s finished.

Sylvain isn’t taller than he was five years ago but he’s broader, muscled from years of frantic fighting and handling the Lance of Ruin as though it’s as light as the training weapons they were given at academy. The fabric over his chest is clearly a little strained. Felix does not stare, only watches a little out of the corner of his eye as Sylvain does another of those unnecessary stretches. 

“Healer, right, I’m coming.” Sylvain fucking winks again and falls into step beside Felix. 

“You know,” he says as they wind their way through the halls, “I should probably see a tailor if I’m staying here. Get a few outfits that fit.”

“Obviously,” Felix says. 

“But,” Sylvain continues, because he’s never once stopped on a thought that made sense, “maybe I should try out a slimmer fit, just ask the tailor to really emphasize my chest, you know?” 

It’s such a stupid idea, but trust Sylvain to sacrifice mobility for aesthetics. “What a terrible idea,” Felix says. 

“Are you sure about that? It would give you something to stare at. I know how much you like my muscles,” Sylvain says, and playfully bumps their shoulders together because he’s never once let something be implied when he could say it in the most graceless way possible. 

“Do what you want,” Felix bites out, since his other options are silence, lying, or validating Sylvain’s terrible ideas. 

“Oh, I will.” Sylvain grins and looks Felix up and down.

This is how Felix is going to die, with Sylvain walking beside him in too-small clothes and casually implying the sorts of things that he really shouldn’t be implying, in public, out loud, to Duke Fraldarius. Felix shuts up for his own self-preservation. If Sylvain says any other clever, stupid things his heart is going to burst, and then he’ll stab Sylvain, and then both of their territories will fall because Sylvain couldn’t stop flirting. 

It’s whole minutes later when Sylvain breaks the silence Felix has determinedly been clinging to. 

“Hey, soooo,” Sylvain says in the tones of someone who really, really doesn’t want to open this particular topic of conversation but feels like they have to, “was that too much?” 

“What?”

“The hitting on you,” Sylvain says in his _ I’m being helpful and considerate _ voice. “Too aggressive?” 

It’s not exactly unpleasant, but Felix has no idea how to respond to it. 

“Seriously, am I making you uncomfortable?” Sylvain actually looks concerned. Fuck. “I can stop. Should I stop?” 

Felix knows, in the part of his brain that’s abstractly aware of how communication works, that Sylvain is probably being thoughtful. However, Felix tries to avoid talking about his feelings. And there’s uncomfortable and then there’s _ uncomfortable_.

“What makes you think I’m uncomfortable?” 

“Usually you insult me when I flirt with you. You sort of just went quiet after that last one,” Sylvain says, like Felix should know that already. 

Perhaps he should put some thought into why insulting Sylvain reads as a normal and comfortable thing to do. 

“No,” Felix says, and doesn’t elaborate. It’s an answer to Sylvain’s stupid, thoughtful question.

“Uh, what does that mean, exactly?” 

“You asked if you should stop. I’m telling you no,” he says, and glares at Sylvain for being so careful and dense.

Sylvain’s staring at him with amusement written all over his face. “Hey, Felix, do you think you could combine those two thoughts? Maybe use a complete sentence. You know, for my peace of mind.” 

Felix sighs. “Are you just trying to fluster me again?” 

“I mean, that’s definitely a bonus, but I’m completely serious here.” 

“Sylvain,” Felix articulates as clearly as possible, because he’s only saying this once, “I don’t hate it when you flirt with me.” 

“Goddess, you’re something,” Sylvain mutters. “I told you how cute it is when you blush, right?” 

“You’ve mentioned. I am not cute,” Felix says, voice purposefully stern. 

Sylvain dissolves into laughter beside him and then clutches at his ribs, so it’s a good thing they’re just reaching Mercedes’s front door. 

“We’re here,” Felix says, grabbing Sylvain’s elbow before he walks right by the building. 

“Did someone start a new infirmary?” Sylvain says through his wincing. 

“Technically they’re starting a new orphanage, but Mercedes never turns down patients.” Felix knocks. 

“You could’ve told me Mercedes is in town. I might have agreed to see a healer last night if I’d known it was her.” 

“As if you would have stopped clinging to me long enough to walk here.” As if Felix would have let Sylvain limp here, vulnerable and trembling. 

“Was that concern? How sweet. You’re so sweet, Felix,” and Sylvain catches him into a one-armed hug. Felix snarls up at him. 

Annette, of course, chooses that exact moment to open the door. 

“Felix! You’re too early again.” Their twice-weekly tea is scheduled for that afternoon. “And do you, uh, need a minute?” She says, eyes wide, looking from Felix to Sylvain and back again. 

“I _ know _,” Felix says, entirely ignoring Annette’s question. “Sylvain got himself injured on the way here. I did what I could, but he should see a real healer.” 

“Oh, come in then! I’ll call Mercie,” Annette says, all smiles now she doesn’t think that Felix is just being inconsiderate. 

“This is a nice place, Annette,” Sylvain says, voice deepening just a little. “Be honest. Did you move here to keep on eye on Felix?” 

“We moved here because it was a practical place to help people, of course,” Annette says, and bless her for it. “But I _ guess _ Felix is a plus. He did give us this house, after all. Here, wait here -” she shows them into the cozy little kitchen. “You can have the cookies, but don’t touch anything else.” 

Felix settles into his favorite chair and glares at the plate of cookies. There’s a heavenly-smelling tray of something under a thin towel that must be whatever Mercedes decided to make for tea, but Annette will yell at him if he even looks at it. 

“So you gave them a whole house, huh? A nice one, too.” Sylvain takes a handful of cookies. 

“Have you ever tried saying no to Annette? We needed someone to develop a better orphanage system anyway.” 

“What’d you have before?” Sylvain says through a mouthful of cookie. 

“Nothing formal. Mercedes and Annette have only been here for a few weeks, but they’re also working on logistics for schools and better food distribution.” 

“Mercedes is a special lady. I always figured she’d do something like this after the war.” Sylvain deepens his voice like he’s thinking about something very distinct from Mercedes’s kind nature and talent for helping people. 

It’s a reasonable compliment, and absolutely true, and Mercedes is a good friend. She and Sylvain have always been close. Felix is not, cannot be, _ refuses _ to be jealous of the way Sylvain compliments their mutual friend. 

“Does that bother you?” Sylvain says, because he always reads too much into Felix’s silences, and is often infuriatingly correct. 

“Must you use that tone of voice?” Felix asks. Sylvain isn’t going to let him back out of this; he might as well get the emotional honesty over with. 

Sylvain shrugs. “It’s a hard habit to break. You want me to only talk like that to you? I can try that, as long as you forgive the occasional mistake.” His voice drifts back into that lower register. 

That does, admittedly, sound good. It makes Felix’s heart feel like it fits correctly in his chest. It also sounds like it would probably be an unreasonable request. “Do what you want,” he says. 

Sylvain steps closer. He perches himself on the table right in front of Felix, leans dangerously close. Felix feels a hand cupping his chin, guiding rather than demanding. 

“I thought I already told you, I plan to do exactly what I want,” Sylvain says, still in that annoyingly deep voice. 

Even the cookie crumbs in his beard aren’t enough to ruin the effect. It’s truly, deeply unfair, Felix distantly considers, that Sylvain can sit here with his stupid too-tight clothes and bruised ribs and scruffy beard and still do _ this _, make Felix forget what it’s like to have an even heartbeat and a series of reasonable thoughts in his head. Sylvain is right there, far closer than arms reach.

So of course Annette chooses that moment to return. 

“Oh, we aren’t interrupting, are we?” Mercedes says in her impossibly sweet voice. 

“No,” Felix says, too quickly. 

Sylvain straightens but doesn’t bother to move from his perch in front of Felix. “Mercedes! It’s so good to see you” he says, in his normal speaking voice. “Especially since I think I busted up a few ribs.”

“Oh dear,” Mercedes says with predictable concern. “Come with me. I’m sure I can fix you up.” 

Sylvain gives a cheery little wave to Felix as he follows her out of the kitchen. Annette flops down into the chair across from Felix, because apparently today nothing can be easy. 

“So you and Sylvain are finally-”

“We’re not,” Felix says before she can even finish the sentence. 

Annette nibbles on a cookie and gazes judgmentally at Felix. 

“Felix,” she starts slowly, “I know you rarely acknowledge your emotions,” 

“My emotions are _ fine_.” 

Annette ignores him. “But that wasn’t a normal friend thing to do.” 

“I _ know _ that, it doesn’t mean we’re together. It’s Sylvain, he flirts.” It sounds false even to himself.

“That was way past flirting. That was seduction.” 

“Again, it’s _ Sylvain _-” Felix growls. 

“Yeah, it was Sylvain seducing you. In my kitchen.” It’s incredible how someone so tiny and adorable can look so exasperated. 

“That’s not - it’s not like that’s the only time Sylvain has tried something like that.”

“Felix,” Annette says as though she’s talking to a particularly small and oblivious child, “how many times has Sylvain tried to seduce you?” 

“Uh,” and, well, how many times _ has _ Sylvain tried? There was Enbarr, obviously. The forest, arguably. Right now, apparently. Does earlier that morning count? Does last night? “Three.” 

“Okay, so adjusting for who you are as a person, let’s call it seven.” Annette nods decisively. 

“That seems high.” Three seems high enough.

“Felix, my dearest, grumpiest, and most self-sabotaging friend, have you considered talking to him?” 

“We haven’t not talked,” Felix says. “We’ve… discussed things. Look, how did you and Mercedes…?” 

“You really don’t need to know the details, but it did involve communicating! We used complete sentences, and also sincerity. Have you tried that? Sentences like ‘we haven’t not talked’ don’t count.” Annette’s glares are not at all intimidating, but he really does hate making Annette mad. 

“I don’t know! What am I supposed to say?” 

“Well, how does he make you feel? You can tell me, right?” 

And, yes, if there’s anyone he can talk about emotions to it’s Annette. 

“Fine. _ Fine_, he - look, Sylvain is important to me.” 

Annette nods encouragingly. “That’s a good start. Go on.” 

“I don’t like seeing him hurt. He’s comfortable.” Sylvain is comfortable, in every possible way - from his warm arms to how good he is at understanding Felix. His teasing and flirting never feels wrong, just strange. Annette is still waiting expectantly, like Felix should have whole paragraphs of feelings. And shouldn’t he? Sylvain had a whole poem, on the spur of the moment, just about Felix. 

“Everything feels more manageable when he’s around. I want to protect him and see his real smile,” and there’s so much more, so much to say about the way Sylvain sprawls over him and always looks for excuses to put his hands in Felix’s hair, about how he’s so careful not to push too far, but Felix's words have already run dry. 

“That was really good!” Annette says brightly. “So tell him that.”

“What.” 

“You just translated some of your feelings into words.” Annette’s back to the slow, patronizing voice. “So now you take those words and you repeat them to Sylvain. It’s called communicating.” 

“It isn’t that simple,” Felix says. Annette sounds like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Presumably she did something similar with Mercedes, earlier and better and probably without the benefit of someone coaching her through vocalizing her feelings.

“Are you sure? He seemed pretty eager.” 

“I know he is. That doesn’t make it easy.” 

Annette shrugs and bounces up from her chair. “Well, that’s all I can do for you! Let me know when you finally get it together.” 

Felix sighs. “I will. Thank you,” he adds, and for Annette it’s barely resentful at all. 

“You know, I feel inspired to write a song about emotionally incompetent swordmasters! What rhymes with ‘repressed’?”

“Depressed?” Felix offers unenthusiastically. 

Sylvain returns while Felix is thinking up a rhyme for “hopeless”. Annette stops her composition and grabs another cookie, munching on it and standing out of the way like Felix and Sylvain are free entertainment. 

“I’m all healed,” Sylvain says, hopping back up on the edge of the table so Felix has to crane his neck to look at him. “I mean, I’m supposed to take it easy for a couple days, but nothing’s broken anymore.” He tucks an escaped lock of hair back behind Felix’s ear like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“Good,” Felix says. “I couldn’t have you dying from some broken ribs.” 

“I should go see a tailor next. You coming? You can give me all your opinions on exactly what I should wear.” His hand reaches down to cup Felix’s jaw again. 

He really shouldn’t. There’s a whole to-do list, and the hours he’d set aside for himself are already running out. 

“I have meetings.” Felix always has meetings. Today they’re - what? The merchants all voiced their latest complaints yesterday, the day before was mostly responding to letters, and the food supply problems are a constant presence that rearranges his schedule at will. Today must be checking on preparations for Dimitri; he’s arriving in less than a week, after all, and Fraldarius will have to exercise rarely-seen formality. “Preparations for the king,” he clarifies. 

“His Majesty’s coming here?” Of course. Sylvain has been out of reach of news for several weeks. 

“He’s going on some sort of tour. It isn’t a terrible idea in principle, but he wants to see me. He should arrive in about a week.” Felix glares down at the table. 

“Sounds important. You want me to sit in on some of those meetings? The tailor can wait.” 

“You idiot,” Felix says, and catches himself. He’s starting to see what Sylvain means about all of the insults. “I’ll deal with it. You should rest.”

“If you insist,” Sylvain says, and nudges Felix’s chin up until he can’t glare at the table anymore. “Hey, if you need anything - moral support, a little stress relief,” Sylvain winks, “you know where to find me.” 

“My quarters, I assume,” Felix says. Sylvain hasn’t shown any signs of moving back to his old room, and Felix has neither the will nor the desire to kick him out. 

Sylvain’s laugh isn’t accompanied by a hiss of pain this time. Good. 

“Yeah. Right by your side,” Sylvain says, and finally gets up. “I’ll get something you’ll like,” he calls over his shoulder as he leaves. 

There’s silence in his wake, until Annette recovers from where she’s still watching in the corner of the kitchen. 

“Does that count as another seduction?” she wonders aloud. 

“It doesn’t count.” Felix has no idea, but he’s not about to hand that point to her. 

“Well, anyway, you’re fucked,” Annette says cheerfully. 

Felix groans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first 4000 words of this wasn't supposed to exist. Sylvain's greatest joy in life is fucking up my outlines. Please take this overly-long chapter about flirting. 
> 
> Chapter 15 is half-written, it's probably going to be monstrously long because half of the outline for chapter 14 is getting transplanted into it, and I'm going to post it on time and complete anyway because I've been excited about it for about two months now.
> 
> As always thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated but not required, and you can see me complain about the creative process @thecaryatid.


	15. Confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! This fic's name is taken from "I am easy to find" by The National. It's also the song I listened to on loop for about eight hours while I drafted this thing. If you want, you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/track/65lu5ezyVeWJmgUp0pjeGV).
> 
> Warnings for descriptions of a panic attack, more of Sylvain's bullshit internal monologue, and sex.

Sylvain followed through on his threat to buy _ something Felix would like to stare at_. Six days in a row Felix has woken up curled warm and comfortable against a barely-clothed Sylvain, stumbled out of bed, and then watched an hour later as Sylvain regains consciousness and dresses himself in soft, warm trousers and shirts that are a little too snug in the shoulders and unlace halfway down the front. 

Every _ fucking _ day. Sylvain gets more gleeful every time he notices Felix staring, and Sylvain keeps finding more excuses to hold Felix caged against his chest. 

Six days is enough time for Felix to feel worn down. It seems like it’s only a matter of time until something finally breaks. 

In the end, it’s because of Dimitri. 

* * *

The morning of Dimitri’s arrival finds Felix pacing his study like a hunted fox, trapped and restless all at once, seething between bites of breakfast that he could barely taste. Sylvain sits unusually quiet on the couch, eyes following Felix. 

“This is stupid. I can’t avoid him forever. I knew I couldn't avoid him forever.” 

Sylvain makes a sympathetic grunting sound. 

“I want him to recover. Of course I want him to recover. I don’t even hate him! But I don’t know if I can talk to him and I couldn’t refuse.”

Sylvain’s mouth presses into a worried frown. 

“What do I _ say _ to him? ‘Have you hallucinated my brother lately’? I’m going to be an asshole and then he’ll tell me how much he fucking _ admires _me or something and I’ll want to stab both of us.” 

“Hey, Fe.” It’s the first words Sylvain has spoken in a while. “C’mere?” 

“I don’t need your _ comfort _,” Felix spits, and instantly regrets it. “...sorry,” he says into the silence. 

“You definitely owe me a hug for that one.” Sylvain’s smile isn’t cracked; his voice isn’t full of careful misdirection. He opens his arms again, offering and waiting. Always offering and waiting for Felix to accept.

And always, Felix does. He sits inches away from Sylvain, flinching away from careful touches and then relaxing into them once the scared, sleepless part of his mind remembers how to be touched. Sylvain gives him time, rests broad hands on the span of Felix’s shoulders until he untenses. Then Felix is pulled closer, settled in the circle of Sylvain’s arms until he’s curled up with his head on Sylvain’s chest and two warm hands stroking firm across his back. 

His breathing comes easier as he listens to the steady warmth of Sylvain’s heartbeat. When did his breathing become labored? He hadn’t even noticed the tightening of his lungs.

“Close your eyes, Fe.” Sylvain presses Felix’s head a little more firmly against his chest. “You know your breathing gets uneven when you’re upset? It worries me.” 

Does it? Felix has noticed that, occasionally, in the tightness of his chest during battles and funerals. He’d never connected it to actual trouble breathing, just to inconvenient emotions playing tricks on him. There’s fury in the knowledge that his own body betrays him in this way.

“There it is again. You can hear my breathing, right? Breathe with me, Felix.” 

Felix closes his eyes and focuses on Sylvain’s breathing, steady as the ocean. It helps. Sylvain is warm as sunlight and grounding as the sharp scent of pine. Felix matches it until, minutes later, he melts into a pile of sheltered warmth. 

Finally, Felix pulls away. Sylvain lets him. 

“Better?” 

Felix nods. 

“Guess you needed my comfort after all. And I got my hug. Really, what’s the downside?” 

“I suppose. Thank you.” Felix grudgingly bites out, and then throws a pillow at Sylvain’s dumb face. 

* * *

The king’s party arrives with very little fanfare. A few guards, a few advisers, and a herald. For Faerghus royalty it’s just this side of traveling incognito. 

It makes sense. This is the first official visit of Dimitri’s young reign; no wonder he wanted to go somewhere close by and traditionally unawed by royalty. Felix’s presence is just an added bonus. 

Ashe and Dedue are in the party, both wearing Dimitri’s heraldry. It’s familiar for a retainer and knight, even if they are both close friends of the king. 

There’s the usual formalities: formal greetings, stiff between Felix and Dimitri and more casual between Dimitri and Sylvain, although Dimitri does cast a quizzical look at Gautier in Fraldarius. 

“Just helping Felix settling in to being a lord,” Sylvain says to a question that no one verbally asked. 

“Of course,” Dimitri says in polite acceptance.

The tour of the city is all rote, making introductions and waving to commoners while Felix keeps up a recitation of how many soldiers have been resettled and which families are running productive farms. It’s not enjoyable. Felix still holds on to every minute of it, thinking up endless developments Dimitri should be notified of, until it’s creeping past the time they agreed on for their private meeting. 

“Shall we return to your manor, Felix?” Dimitri says after it becomes clear that Felix isn’t going to broach the subject. 

He sighs. “Of course. We’ll meet in my private sitting room.” He turns back to the castle immediately, Dimitri hurrying to keep up, Sylvain a warm presence at his side. 

Sylvain leans in close. “You want me to crash your party, Felix? Break the ice a little?”

It’s tempting. Sylvain, there to make stupid jokes, flirt and laugh and interrupt Felix if he starts saying anything he’ll regret later. But Felix shakes his head. 

“Just… be somewhere I can find you afterwards.” It’s only Sylvain, he can ask for this from Sylvain. 

“Yeah. I’ll wait in the library, right? Go ahead and summon me when you’re done.”

Felix nods, not trusting his voice, and breathes deep and even when Sylvain pulls him into one more half-hug. He leaves his arm around Felix’s shoulders all the way back to the manor. 

Tea has already been delivered to Felix’s sitting room. Both of their favorites. Mercedes insisted on baking for the occasion, saying the familiarity of her and Annette’s cooking would make Felix more at ease. They had a point. The fragrance of his favorite popovers fresh from the oven is soothing. 

“Please, sit,” Felix says, ever the grudgingly adequate host. 

Dimitri sits. He takes his cup of tea, cradling it in ever-gauntletted hands. “Allow me to thank you for accommodating me.” 

“Don’t. A duke can hardly avoid his king forever.” 

“Nevertheless, Felix, I am aware this is not easy for you.” 

Felix scoffs. “And yet you’re here anyway.” He studies Dimitri’s face, looking for the boar, looking for his friend. _ They are both the real me_, he’d said last time they really talked. But it’s neither. 

“You seem to be settling into lordship well,” Dimitri says into the awkward silence. “I am impressed by how much you are accomplishing.” 

Has he accomplished so much? Felix has lost all barometer for that. “It’s only what’s required to keep my territory stable.” 

“That is still no easy task.” Dimitri pauses, as though weighing his words. “Rodrigue would be proud of you.” 

Felix thinks of the empty spot where Glenn’s final portrait used to hang, and of piles of belongings unceremoniously given away, and of bundles of letters he still hasn’t read. 

“How would you know. Is that what his ghost told you?” Too sharp, too pained, sadness alchemized into one more dagger. 

It’s probably too late to moderate anger into concern. Felix tries anyway. “Are you still seeing them?” 

Dimitri sighs. “I doubt they will ever vanish entirely. But it has become easier. They are not angry anymore, and I live surrounded by the living.” 

“Good,” Felix says, and means it. “It’s about time.” 

“Your-” 

“If you’re going to say anything about Glenn or Rodrigue, don’t bother. I’m pleased you have stopped being the watcher at their graves; now cease trying to bury me with them.” This sentence is clear and clipped, blunt and sincere, and Felix doesn’t regret it. 

He expects Dimitri to look stricken, angry, hurt. 

“Will you accept my apology?” 

Felix stares. 

“You have tried only to help me. I do not wish to make you feel as though you are a stand-in or a ghost.” 

There is, really, nothing like a sincere apology to make Felix feel like a piece of shit. 

“It’s possible,” Felix says cautiously, carefully, “that I have been harsh at times.”

Dimitri smiles. “No more than I have. Do you remember how you stood guard over me at the cathedral? I never thanked you.” 

“I thought you were too far gone to notice.” Felix sighs, finally sips his tea. The tension, in some impossible way, eases. “How are you, really? Acting as king must be difficult.” 

“Of course. I am unaccustomed to the role. But there are many good people helping me, and Ashe and Dedue have stayed by my side. My advisers are already pressing me to schedule my formal coronation, although I believe it is a frivolous thing to spend our resources on when we are so focused on repairing damage.”

Ashe and Dedue, both wearing the colors of Dimitri’s household rather than the various blues of knights and guards. 

“They’re correct,” Felix snaps. “Schedule a coronation. The longer you take to be crowned the weaker your position will be.” And then, because it’s a knife he can’t help twisting, “Ashe and Dedue. You are… that is, the three of you… together.”

Dimitri flushes. “I understand it is quite unorthodox, but yes. We are happy.” 

“Ah. Well, congratulations,” Felix says, because it feels like the sort of pronouncement that expects a reaction. 

“My thanks. Congratulations to you as well,” Dimitri says, bright as a puppy. 

“For what?” 

“For you and Sylvain, of course.” Dimitri looks bright and sincere as ever, delighted to have cleared the air, painfully sweet in his well-wishes. 

“That’s not - it’s not - _ we _ are not.” Felix isn’t making much sense; he feels like punching a wall and then going on a long, cold walk until he can think again. 

“Did I misread the situation? You seemed-” 

Is interrupting the king a habit he should try to break? “Don’t bring it up. Really, do not talk about it. Tell me about the plans for this coronation you’ve been trying to avoid.” 

Their conversation lingers on politics and procedure, safe things. It’s bearable, almost pleasant. Dimitri finally leaves with a small bow. 

“I am grateful for both your advice and your friendship,” Dimitri says. 

Friendship. Unavoidable, Felix supposes. All for the better, if they must work together to rebuild the kingdom. “Dimitri. We should do this again sometime.” 

Dimitri bows again, smiling, and leaves. 

Felix closes the door after him, counts carefully to ten, and punches the wall hard enough to hurt. 

Because Dimitri was _ happy_. Out of everyone involved in this war Dimitri was the worst off, the one who broke and was broken in turn. He’d ripped people apart with his bare hands and watched thousands of people sacrifice themselves for _ him_, and he knew he could never deserve that sort of loyalty or do justice to that sort of sacrifice.

Felix kept looking for a crack in the mask, for the horrible emptiness that rested below Dimitri’s polished porcelain skin, and it _ wasn’t there_. 

Dimitri wasn’t the same as he’d been as a child, or as an awkward shattered teen at the academy, or as the sharpened spear he’d been when they found him in a heap of corpses at Garreg Mach. He was all of it, and none of it. Glimpses of fury lurked in the edge of his smile and the way he picks up lances and teacups without so much fear that they’ll break, now. The boar has folded all of the awful, smothered bits of himself into the prince-perfect mask, kneaded them together until they disappeared into one smooth conglomeration better than its parts. The prince and the boar didn’t separate like oil and water, they flowed like the sea and salt. They pushed and pulled like the moon and the tide, like sword and song.

It’s what Felix wanted. It’s what he wished Dimitri had done ten years ago. 

So why did it hurt so _ badly_? Surely Felix can’t be that selfish. He can’t be hiding away in the rooms he’s finally gotten used to just because Dimitri found some measure of happiness. He can’t possibly admit that, miserable as he’s been hiding away in his dukedom spending endless hours on trade and politics, he’s taken comfort in falling asleep knowing that back in Fhirdiad Dimitri must be having an even worse time adjusting to the burdens of rule. 

Dimitri isn’t. He’s arguing with advisors and avoiding his coronation and writing policy, and spending his days - and nights? - with Ashe and Dedue. 

Maybe that’s the secret. Perhaps Dimitri has hurt so long and so deeply that nothing smaller can touch him, now. 

Felix’s hands, he notices, are trembling. There’s another thought there, just out of reach. If _ Dimitri _of all people can find some measure of peace and happiness - if the boar prince can move on to be just a king, and a man - why can’t Felix? 

Sylvain is just rooms away. He’s living in Felix’s manor, flirting day and night, sleeping in Felix’s _ bed_, for fuck’s sake. He’s written poems about Felix’s beauty, held Felix through nightmares, collapsed into Felix’s arms.

Felix draws in a shuddering breath and then another, concentrating on the expanding of his lungs and the slowly-quieting beat of his heart. 

* * *

Sylvain arrives minutes after he’s summoned, following Felix into the sitting room and lingering by the door.

“Sylvain,” Felix starts, and stutters to a halt. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says back, teasing. 

Fuck words, Felix decides. He can do the words part later. He takes two careful steps forward until his booted feet are just shy of touching Sylvain’s. Felix looks up, leaning deliberately up into Sylvain’s space. 

They’re standing close together, and Felix takes his time to look over Sylvain’s reaction. His eyes are wide and he’s taking shallow breaths as though breathing too deep will scare Felix away. Felix looks up into Sylvain’s eyes as calmly as he can before cupping the back of Sylvain’s neck and leaning up. 

Everything is so _ warm _ while he’s kissing Sylvain. It only gets warmer as he shifts from carefully pressing their mouths together to curiously licking at the seam of Sylvain’s lips. Then Sylvain makes a strangled noise and clenches one of his hands in Felix’s long hair and tilts his jaw back with the other, and all at once Felix is being devoured. 

He never realized that a kiss could be so overwhelming. But Sylvain’s licking into Felix like his one goal in life is mapping the inside of Felix’s mouth and then memorizing all of the best ways to make him moan, and it’s impossible to want it to end. 

Pulling away is a struggle. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says again, hoarser than he should be. At some point during their kiss - kisses, he supposes - Sylvain has positioned them so Felix’s back is against the door. He leans back gratefully, tilting his head back against the wall and looking up into Sylvain’s eyes. Sylvain’s hands are still where they were a minute ago, winding through his hair and stroking at his jaw. 

“Wait. Give me a minute,” he says as Sylvain leans forward to kiss him again. “I’ve been thinking,” Felix begins again, and hates the way his voice breaks on the words, “that I have been needlessly hesitant.”

“Go on,” Sylvain says right into his ear, crowding him closer until Felix is pressed between the unyielding door and Sylvain’s equally-unyielding bulk. 

“I’m only going to say this once,” Felix says, and it comes out sounding more like anger than anything else. “I love you. Stay with me forever.” 

“That sounds a lot like a proposal, Felix. Did you bring a ring?” 

Felix shudders as Sylvain’s lips brush his ear. 

“Shut up. Take this seriously.” Felix _ knows _ that Sylvain loves him, there’s abundant evidence, but that doesn’t stop the spike of terror at being so vulnerable. 

“Yeah. Believe me, I’m taking it seriously. You’d better stay with me forever too, okay?” His lips move to press at the sensitive skin just under Felix’s ear. “Can I kiss you again now?”

“Say it first. Properly.” For once it’s Felix trying to drag words out of Sylvain. 

Sylvain leans back enough that Felix isn’t quite so caged in and smiles, soft and hesitant as Felix has ever seen him. “I’ve loved you for a pretty long time, Fe,” he says finally. He leans down for another kiss, but Felix has other plans. 

“Come _ on _,” Sylvain whines when Felix shoves him away again. The rest of his complaint dies when Felix drops to his knees. 

“Oh. _ Okay. _ so this is - this is happening,” Sylvain mutters above him, and then repositions so he’s leaning against the wall for support. A rough hand winds its way into Felix’s hair while Felix runs his hands over the firm muscle at Sylvain’s waist and takes his time stroking down, following the thin trail of hair that starts below Sylvain’s bellybutton, until he finally hooks fingers into Sylvain’s pants and slides them over his hips, leaving them to pool on the floor. 

Sylvain’s breathing is ragged already, untouched and all, and Felix feels so powerful being the cause. 

“Hey, _ hey_, you don’t - I mean, I want you to, but you don’t have to, okay, Felix? I believe you.” Sylvain’s words come out all in a rush, like it’s costing him every last bit of self control he possesses.

The expanse of Sylvain’s thighs is right by Felix’s nose. He still has his underpants on, and Felix will have to take care of that in a moment, but first things first. He bites into Sylvain’s muscle hard enough that it must hurt and then pulls back, admiring the indentations he left on the skin. Sylvain whines above him. 

“Felix, _ Felix_,” that hand is still pressing into his scalp as Sylvain whimpers his name. It’s so heady; Felix feels himself half-hardening just from the effect he’s having. “You heard me, right? You don’t have to-” 

“Sylvain,” he says slow and careful, and mouths at Sylvain’s clothed cock before continuing, “I want to suck you off.” It should be a difficult sentence to say, shouldn’t it? But it isn’t, it’s so, so easy, spurred on as he is by Sylvain’s desire and concern. 

Sylvain stripping off his shirt and underwear is the best answer Felix could have hoped for. Sylvain is usually so careful about his things, but right now everything falls into a pile to be trampled underfoot. 

“Good,” Felix says, and gives a little kiss to the tip of Sylvain’s cock. It’s not like he’s never seen it before, but he’s never looked at it up close, traced the path of veins with his tongue as he’s doing now. Sylvain scratches at his scalp desperately, but Felix won’t be rushed. There’s so much of Sylvain to explore.

There are so many ways a needy whine can sound, Felix learns as he takes his time stroking the underside of Sylvain’s cock and kissing the crease where his thighs meet his hips and running a hesitant tongue over his balls. They all draw different noises from Sylvain’s throat, gasps and whimpers and strangled moans, variations on the theme of want. 

He hasn’t done this often, or recently, but no matter. Felix is determined, and Sylvain’s noises are a good enough guide. 

The tip of Sylvain’s cock is wide enough that Felix takes care when he finally wraps his lips around it, accompanied by Sylvain’s shattered moan. 

Considering Sylvain’s desperate noises and the tremulous little twitches of his hips, this won’t take long at all. Felix doesn’t worry about pacing himself and focuses on whatever draws the best sounds out of Sylvain, rubbing a thumb down the base of his cock and cupping his balls with the other hand. It’s harder to maneuver his tongue with his mouth so full but Felix tries it anyway, pressing the flat of his tongue up against the underside of the cock and then slowly pressing down until it’s on the verge of entering his throat. 

“Fe, Felix,” Sylvain’s voice breaks in the middle of Felix’s name. 

Felix lifts mostly off the cock to gulp down a breath and tries again, pressing down just as gradually as before and savoring the way he can feel Sylvain straining not to thrust. He gets a little further this time, pressing at the limits of his ability to keep from gagging, rewarded by another gasping whine. Taking Sylvain’s entire cock might be too ambitious for today, but he’ll work up to it. 

A particularly hard tug on his hair sends a jolt straight through to Felix’s own cock, and he files that away with all of the other things to investigate at length with Sylvain. But the tugging doesn’t stop and Sylvain’s moans are turning into whimpers, so he lets himself be pulled off. 

“Felix. _ Felix_,” Sylvain gasps. He’s flushed and a little teary-eyed, but not ruined, not fucked senseless quite yet. He’ll get there, once Felix figures out what’s so important that Sylvain had to interrupt his blowjob. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, straightforward in his annoyance. “Is there a problem?” 

“Gonna cum.” The first coherent words Sylvain has managed since this whole thing started.

It sounds, to Felix, like the opposite of a problem, so he hums and leans in to take Sylvain’s cock again. 

The tug on his hair is almost hard enough to hurt this time. “_Felix_,” so desperate it’s almost a sob, “I’m gonna cum.” Sylvain’s enunciating with the great precision of someone who’s frantically hiding their complete lack of brain function. 

“That’s the point,” Felix says, with a great deal of patient frustration. 

“You don’t have to - don’t wanna make you -” Sylvain’s ability to speak in complete sentences abandons him again. 

So that’s the problem. It’s touching, how concerned Sylvain is with making sure Felix is enthusiastic about every little thing. It’s also frustrating - will Felix always need to vocalize every single thing he wants to do? It’s a conversation for another day. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, and waits until Sylvain is really looking at him with those warm, darkened eyes. “I want you to come in my mouth.” He waits, just in case Sylvain has some other objection. 

But Sylvain lets his head fall back against the door with an audible thunk and then whispers, with reverence usually reserved for prayers, “ Felix, Felix, _ please_.” 

He slips his mouth over Sylvain again, repeats - hand stroking the base, other hand playing with the balls, flat of his tongue licking up at the underside of the cock. Felix takes a deep, steadying breath and presses down again, willing himself to relax. Sylvain is so close, and Felix can endure a bit of discomfort. So he presses down further and doesn’t stop when Sylvain’s cock reaches his throat, and he doesn’t even have time to register Sylvain’s frantic little thrusts before his mouth fills up with cum. 

Sylvain’s softened, dripping cock slips out of his mouth while Felix fights against his coughing. There was more than he expected. He didn’t plan ahead for this; there’s nowhere to spit and nothing to wash it down with, so he closes his mouth and determinedly swallows. The flavor isn’t so bad; it’s a little salty, but mostly tastes like nothing. The sticky, thick texture is borderline offensive. 

For Sylvain, he can put up with it anyway. 

Sylvain himself collapses slowly onto the floor, relaxed and boneless, face slack like a single blowjob made him forget about all of life’s troubles. His hand never left Felix’s hair, and Sylvain uses it to tug Felix forward. 

“Gross,” Sylvain says fondly toward the cum dribbling out of Felix’s mouth, before licking it up and kissing Felix deep. It should be disgusting, but Felix presses up into the kiss anyway, letting himself be devoured in any way Sylvain wants. 

And then pulls away, ignoring Sylvain’s whine, because this is an image he wants to remember, Sylvain pliant and needy. He’s flushed. His lips are red and swollen from kiss after kiss and slicked with spit and his own cum, and he’s blinking back sluggish tears of - what? Emotion, overstimulation, want? Felix brushes away one of them and then leans in, closer than he’s ever been, and carefully kisses the track. 

Beneath him Sylvain laughs, warm and rolling. 

“Sweetheart,” Sylvain says, while Felix allows himself to get distracted kissing every freckle on Sylvain’s cheeks. 

“Darling, honey, kitten. My heart, my love, my life,” he’s fumbling for the clasps of Felix’s jacket and tilting his head up to chase Felix’s lips. It’s relaxed this time, like Sylvain thinks he’ll only be complete once he and Felix are pressed skin-to-skin and breath-to-breath but knows he has a very long time in which to accomplish that. 

“You’re so good, so beautiful,” and there goes Felix’s jacket, “you take my cock so well, you’re so pretty with my cum dribbling out of your mouth.” Felix’s shirt joins the pile of clothes on the floor. 

“Come on, sit up, let me take these off, I wanna see you,” Sylvain bites Felix’s neck for emphasis as Felix lets himself be guided, “leave bruises on your thighs, kiss your scars, stroke your cock,” Felix kicks his boots off so Sylvain can finish shucking off his pants, and there’s a bite at the join of his shoulder this time. 

Felix groans. Sylvain pauses long enough to grin up in triumph. “Gonna hear you make so many pretty moans, Felix,” and finally Felix’s underwear is dragged off his body and his hair tie is gently untangled from his hair. 

Felix whimpers, his second uncontrolled sound of the hour. All of a sudden there’s nothing, no distance and no illusions and not a stitch of clothing between himself and Sylvain. His ignored cock is achingly hard and brushing up against Sylvain’s stomach, his heart is pounding much too loudly. He thinks he might be trembling, and lunges forward to wrap his arms around Sylvain’s shoulders half to hide it and half because Sylvain is just that grounding, that comforting, even when he’s the sole cause of Felix’s labored breathing. 

It’s too much to ask that Sylvain not notice. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, touches shifting from teasing to soothing, hands leaving Felix’s ass and settling carefully at the small of his back, “you okay, sweetheart? Is this too fast?” 

It isn’t too fast. No amount of waiting will make it easier for Felix to present himself like this, defenseless with want, and there’s no time or place he’d rather deal with it than right here and now. 

“It’s not too fast,” Felix says. He’s learning that Sylvain insists on getting answers to questions like that. “Bed. _ Now_,” he insists, when Sylvain still looks hesitant. Felix locks his arms around Sylvain’s shoulders and his legs around Sylvain’s waist; he can figure out how to get them there. 

* * *

It takes some maneuvering, but Sylvain is nothing if not practiced in the art of arranging entangled bodies into more useful positions. The bed is two whole closed doors away, and there are a few moments where he’s worried about dropping Felix as he awkwardly supports both of their weights. But Felix’s grip around his shoulders and hips is far too tight for a little thing like gravity to interrupt it, like he’s abruptly decided that any amount of distance is too much. 

Sylvain emphatically does not mind. But he’s also pretty emphatically worried about how quiet and trembly Felix just became, so he describes at length how he likes this new, clingy behavior. Because hey, either it’ll comfort Felix or it’ll piss him off, and either way it’ll probably stop his trembling. 

“I love the way you don’t want to let go of me,” he whispers into Felix’s ear as he settles on the bed, leaning back against the headboard with Felix adamantly on his lap. “So clingy, so cuddly, I'm the only person who gets to see that.” 

There’s a little scoffing sound from Felix. Good. 

“I’m going to get hard again just thinking about that blowjob, kitten. You’re so good for me.” That gets a quiet sigh against his shoulder.

The convenient thing about trying to sweet-talk Felix is that everything Sylvain says is true. He loves everything about Felix, even the scarred edges that make him so difficult to hold onto. He could praise Felix’s vulnerability, he could write songs about Felix’s glares, he could engrave his love for the way Felix snarls when he’s annoyed onto his heart. Every word of it would be true. 

“Tell me what you want,” Sylvain says, close to begging. “Anything you want. You’re in control here, kitten.” 

Felix finally straightens up, looking down his perfect nose at Sylvain in disdain. 

“_Kitten_,” Felix repeats, soft and dangerous. 

“Mmm,” Sylvain says agreeably, and kisses the tip of Felix’s nose. “My kitten.” He’s completely prepared when Felix bares his teeth like he’s going to rip Sylvain’s throat out. Sylvain even tilts his head back, giving Felix access to leave as many bite marks as he considers fair. Which is, honestly, the best possible outcome - naked, horny, and slightly pissed-off Felix is quickly turning into his favorite Felix. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says slow and deliberate, shifting so he’s sitting on top of Sylvain instead of clinging to him. 

“Kitten,” Sylvain says again. He’s going to stick with that pet name until Felix actually stabs him over it. 

Felix soldiers on with whatever he was going to say, ignoring Sylvain’s ever-so-inconvenient interruption. “You should fuck me.” 

Which is, okay, the sort of thing Felix has said to him in a number of dreams that were delicious while he was asleep and a little awkward once he woke up gasping next to Felix himself. And not the sort of thing he’d expected to hear directly from real, physical Felix on the first night they fuck, and Sylvain is reduced to staring gasping and open-mouthed at perfect, haughty, overconfident Felix. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, slower this time, leaning forward to brush his lips against Sylvain ear - which, hey, that’s Sylvain’s trick, even if it does feel so perfect coming from Felix - “don’t you want to fuck me?” It’s teasing, annoyed, more than a little impatient. 

Sylvain rests his hands on Felix’s hips. They’re perfect, muscled and a little bony. He squeezes, just to check, just to make sure this isn’t one more too-tantalizing dream he’s found himself in. Sylvain’s fingers find warm flesh, and Felix hisses into his ear. Not a dream, then; Felix, warm and here and now. 

“Felix, darling, kitten, I want to fuck you so much, want you to feel me inside you, kitten, fuck, where’s the lube-” his rambling is hard to sustain once Felix shoves on his shoulders hard enough to press Sylvain down onto the mattress and shifts until he’s straddling Sylvain’s hips, the tip of Sylvain’s already-hard cock just brushing against Felix’s thigh. 

“_Kitten_,” Sylvain moans. “You’re going to kill me.” 

Felix leans forward until his hair is tickling Sylvain’s chest and he’s staring right down at Sylvain’s eyes, smirking as though he’s decided he likes whatever it is he sees in them. Naked, horny, anxious and pissed-off Felix from a moment ago is forgotten - well, not forgotten, Sylvain plans to hold on to every one of Felix’s moments and moods for the rest of his life - and horny, naked, confident, pushy Felix becomes Sylvain’s new favorite. 

He squirms up, trying to get close enough to kiss Felix’s mouth, and Felix pins him down with two strong hands splaying across Sylvain’s chest. He whimpers, pressing upward, needier than he can remember being in his life. 

See, Sylvain’s had a lot of sex. He’s fucked men, he’s fucked women. His favorites were the ones who’d had lots of sex and wanted to try something new with someone it wouldn’t scare off. Except, depending on the day, his favorites might be the ones who came to him because they knew they’d be married off and wanted to try fucking someone who knew how to be gentle and wouldn’t expect anything more than a night. 

Felix is Felix, one of Sylvain’s oldest friends, the object of a whole slew of teenage fantasies, and the subject of his newer-but-not-that-new love and devotion. That would be more than enough to make this as good as anything he’s had before.

However. _ However_, Sylvain’s mind is also in the process of short-circuiting because beside the wonderful, unbelievable fact that Felix _ loves him_, Felix also reminds Sylvain of both his favorite types of lays: the nervous first-timers and the ones looking for something new. 

He didn’t expect the confidence or the neediness. If pressed, Sylvain would have said he expected Felix to be sharp and rough and unsure, scratching into Sylvain’s skin but letting himself be lead, and completely unwilling to make his own demands. 

Clearly Sylvain’s fantasies were wrong; gloriously, perfectly wrong, and being pinned on his back by a demanding Felix who knows exactly what he wants, and whose wants include being fucked by Sylvain, really outstrips them all. 

Felix finally - mercifully, tortuously - smirks down again and slips from his perch on top of Sylvain long enough to rummage through some unseen drawer for, presumably, the lube. It would be easy enough to turn his head and watch exactly what Felix is doing, but Sylvain’s getting quite a lot of enjoyment out of lying on his back and delightedly reconstructing every fantasy he’s ever had. 

“You’re perfect,” Sylvain breathes when Felix returns, holding a bottle and settling himself propped up on a stack of pillows against the headboard. 

Felix’s thighs and stomach and their collection of scars are in easy reach, and a direct order from the king in person could not dissuade Sylvain from dragging himself closer and stroking a sword-scar on Felix’s right thigh with a careful fingertip and then a careful tongue. There are so many other scars that deserve the same treatment. All of Felix deserves the same treatment, every inch of skip should be touched and kissed insistent until he’s covered with hundreds of reminders of how much Sylvain adores him.

There’s a more pressing matter right now, see: Sylvain’s new boyfriend and how he wants to get fucked, and learning what sort of fuck he prefers and how Sylvain can best turn him into a fucked-out mess. 

“So perfect. So good for me.” Sylvain goes to plant a kiss on Felix’s other thigh. 

A firm hand in his hair stops him. Felix tugs again, experimentally, and Sylvain follows the tugging with a little whine. He’s always liked having his hair pulled, and coming from Felix? Sylvain’s about to collapse into a delighted little puddle on Felix’s soft bed. 

“You’re so cruel, kitten,” he says, just to see how Felix reacts. And, yup - there’s another yank on his hair. Sylvain arches towards it, whining, desperate heat bleeding all the way from his scalp to his toes. 

“Are you really going to insist on that name?” Felix’s voice is stern like he’s trying too hard not to laugh. 

“Oh, yeah. Especially if you keep getting this pissy about it.” Sylvain crawls the rest of the way, deposits himself in Felix’s lap, and grins disarmingly down. “It really turns me on when you pull my hair.” He’s nothing if not good at communication in bed, and stating the probably-obvious has the added bonus of turning Felix pink and annoyed. 

Predictably, Felix glares. It’s _ so _ cute. “I’m waiting for you to fuck me, Sylvain.” 

“I’m getting there! You can’t let me take five minutes to savor this?” Horny, naked, pissed-off-that-Sylvain-isn’t-fucking-him-yet is the best Felix. It’s official. Sylvain leans down for another kiss and then leans in even further, rests his chin on Felix’s shoulder and wraps his arms around that slender torso. His Felix; his to have and hold and annoy. His Felix, who just demanded to be fucked and doesn’t seem to know what to actually do about that. 

“Important question, Fe,” Sylvain says right into Felix’s ear. And then nips at the earlobe for good measure.

There’s a vaguely affirmative grunt. Amazing how Felix can make the smallest vocalizations sound annoyed. 

“So, and don’t stab me too much for this, has anyone fucked you before?” 

And, yeah, there’s Felix’s mortified hiss and too-quick response, “I have had sex, Sylvain.”

“Yeah, but like,” Sylvain leans back to look at Felix’s gorgeous, embarrassed, angry expression, and decides he’s not afraid of his untimely end. “Has anyone put their dick up your ass?” Felix stares; Sylvain makes a little circle with his thumb and forefinger and shoves his other finger through it, in helpful illustration. 

“When you put it like that, no.” Felix sounds like he’s speaking through about twelve layers of rage and repression. 

“Okay, Fe. You want to let me take the lead?” 

“That’s what I’ve been waiting for you to _ do _.” Felix tugs his hair again and leans up, kissing Sylvain before turning it into another bite. 

“Okay, okay!” Sylvain says through his yelps. Felix is biting at the base of his neck now. He is going to spend the rest of his life covered in hickeys and bite marks. 

Felix doesn't even resist being manhandled into Sylvain’s lap, tucked securely against his chest with legs hooked over Sylvain’s knees. Sylvain feels his deep exhales. And then his gasping inhales, when Sylvain lazily strokes at Felix’s cock. 

“Let’s start with you fingering yourself.” 

Felix doesn't complain. He drizzles lube over his fingers and presses one in with no hesitation, a smooth, practiced, movement. 

“Done that a lot, kitten?” How often has Felix fucked himself open while just rooms away from Sylvain? 

There’s a grunt that might be affirmative. Felix is already probing in with a second finger, teasing his own entrance before sinking it in next to the first. He groans this time, long and drawn out. 

“I could watch you do that forever.” It’s a thought for another day, seeing how long Felix can stand to finger himself before he breaks down and begs. “Did you ever think of me while you fucked yourself?” 

Felix throws his head back and smirks, and Sylvain’s stomach nearly drops out of his body. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” Felix is unfairly lucid-sounding for a man who’s sitting in the lap of his lover and opening up his own ass. 

“Kinda would, Fe. Did you pretend those were my fingers? What did you want me to do to you?” He can't resist a second longer. Sylvain slips his hand down to Felix’s entrance and strokes little semicircles around the rim, teasing, grinning at the feel of Felix flexing and stretching. 

“Yes.” Felix gasps, twitches up against Sylvain’s hand, starts to work in a third finger. “I thought you’d be a fucking tease.” 

“Oh, I am. Maybe not tonight, though.” Sylvain bats away Felix’s fingers from where they’re pressing into his entrance. “I’ll take over for you.” he doesn’t wait for a response before pushing two of his own fingers inside, deep and firm. He should probably pause to give Felix time to adjust, but - There’s this immediate reaction. Felix arches and squirms, trying so hard to fuck himself deeper onto Sylvain’s fingers, so. Sylvain doesn’t pause like he meant to, just starts stroking carefully until he finds a smooth little bulb of tissue, presses his fingers around the borders of it. 

“Sylvain - Sylvain!” Felix’s sudden, desperate squirming and high-pitched cries of Sylvain’s name are everything he could ever have dreamed of. 

“Goddess, you sound good when you say my name. You want more, kitten?” 

“_Yes_.” Felix grinds his hips when Sylvain starts stroking with a third finger, taking his time with this one, getting more lube and pressing in gently. Felix’s hands grab at Sylvain’s thighs, gripping until they’ll surely leave bruises. Which, like, _ so _hot. 

And then it’s Felix making little breathless noises and twitching while Sylvain lazily thrusts his hand. It is, in all probability, not the first time Felix has taken three fingers, but Felix’s own fingers are slimmer than Sylvain’s, and he must be fuller than he’s ever been. 

“Sylvain. _ Fuck me_,” Felix gasps out once he’s recovered a few of his wits.

And Sylvain did say he wouldn’t tease, and Felix is probably prepped enough if they take it slow, and Sylvain has never wanted anything more than to fuck Felix until he actually forgets how to speak. 

He doesn’t warn before he pulls his fingers away. Felix gasps in shock and stares up like Sylvain just personally betrayed him. 

“Come here,” Sylvain says, guiding Felix to turn around and straddle his hips, lining up his cock with Felix’s entrance. 

Felix rubs experimentally against the head of Sylvain’s cock, and then starts pushing down with absolutely no warning. Which, hot, but not great for them having a good fuck that doesn’t end with someone crying. Sylvain catches Felix’s hips, holds him there with just the tip of his cock pressing against Felix’s entrance, and silently gives thanks that he’s strong enough to physically restrain Felix from hurting himself. 

“Slow down, honey. You’ll tear something if you don’t do this gradually.” 

“Fuck you,” Felix says, and leaves another bite mark on Sylvain’s shoulder. 

“Please, kitten? For me?” He leaves the tiniest kiss on Felix’s lips, gentle as Felix is vicious. 

Felix rolls his eyes but nods, so Sylvain goes from restraining to just resting his hands on Felix’s hips. They’re nice hips. And then he whines, because Felix is pressing down slowly this time, millimeter by millimeter, taking Sylvain with impossible gradualness but not pausing at all. 

Not pausing at _ all_, until Felix is sitting with Sylvain’s entire cock sheathed inside him and slumping forward, gasping like he ran from Fhirdiad to Fraldarius, whimpering helplessly like it’s the most overwhelming thing he’s ever felt. 

And like, not to sound too full of himself, but Sylvain’s cock probably is the most overwhelming thing Felix has ever felt. And it’s so good, so perfect, silky heat molded against Sylvain, and thrusting up into it feels like the best idea he’s ever had. 

He pulls Felix closer instead, leaving another series of gentle kisses on the side of Felix’s neck until shattered whimpers turn into ragged breaths and he’s sitting back up, bracing himself on Sylvain’s chest and experimentally grinding down. 

Sylvain stays very, very still, even though it might literally kill him. Felix can take all the time he needs to explore. 

It takes Felix about thirty seconds by Sylvain’s very accurate approximation to move from careful grinding to fucking himself properly, levering up an inch or two and then pressing back down. Sylvain holds on, and whines, and worships. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, finally pausing between thrusts. 

“Yeah. Yeah, anything you want, kitten.” 

Felix grins down, feral and demanding, sweat-soaked and panting and beautiful. “_Fuck _ me already.” 

The rest of Sylvain’s sex life is going to be governed by Felix’s impatience. It’s the work of the moment to flip them so Felix is spread open on his back and Sylvain is deep inside, thrusting slow and firm to the sound of Felix’s gasps. 

“Harder,” Felix orders. 

Sylvain thrusts slow and careful three more times, just to see what impatient, horny, wanting-to-get-fucked-harder Felix will do. 

A hand yanks at his hair; teeth nip at his neck again. “Harder,” Felix commands again. 

This time he obliges, pinning Felix down and thrusting as hard as he’s been wanting since this whole thing started. Felix whines and keeps whining, grabbing at Sylvain’s shoulders, throwing his head back and spilling out needy, fucked-out noises. It isn’t exactly loud compared to the average person’s reaction to being pinned down and fucked to within an inch of their life. For Felix, it’s loud. 

Moans resolve into whimpered repetitions of “Syl - Syl - _ Sylvain_,” and that’s really the last straw, combined with the heat pooling in Sylvain’s stomach and the sheer perfection of Felix clenching around him.

Sylvain comes, gasping out “Felix!” and riding through the orgasm. He doesn't even have the presence of mind to pull out, although all things considered Felix probably didn’t want him to. And, speaking of Felix - 

He’s making this wounded, angry gasping sound, like he can’t believe Sylvain had the audacity to come first. It’s so very cute, and he sort of wants to wait and see what Felix will do - demand a handjob? Drag Sylvain down by the hair and fuck his mouth? - but he did promise not to be a tease tonight. So Sylvain reaches down and strokes Felix, one hand stroking the base of his shaft and the other thumbing unhurriedly at his slit and frenulum. It doesn’t take long. Felix gasps again - a normal, sexy gasp, not one that sounds like it’s actually a promise to murder Sylvain - and comes, all over his chest and Sylvain’s hand, and lies still. 

Tired, fucked-out Felix is even better than Sylvain imagined. He’s pink and gasping, open and vulnerable like he almost never is. Sylvain nestles down next to him and he reaches out, presses himself into Sylvain’s chest without even being prompted. 

“You were so good,” he says as soothingly as he can. “Did you like that, kitten?” 

“Clearly.” Felix’s voice sounds wrecked from all of the whining, and probably also from Sylvain fucking his throat earlier. “I love you,” he adds, so soft that Sylvain barely hears it. 

“I love you. I love you so much.” Sylvain kisses Felix’s forehead and the tip of his nose and finally his mouth, slow and lazy and wonderful, a languid exploration. He’s going to find every way to make Felix moan, but there’s time. There’s always time, now. 

“You should skip your morning training tomorrow,” Sylvain says, smoothing his hand down Felix’s back. Felix is going to feel every one of those thrusts tomorrow. 

“Why would I do that?” Felix sounds sleepy, almost slurred, far too far gone to put any real bite into it. 

“To cuddle with me of course,” Sylvain says as obnoxiously as possible. “And you’re going to be so sore. I really should have been gentler.”

“Fuck you,” Felix mutters. 

“Mmm. Next time.” 

Felix laughs at that, safe in Sylvain’s arms, tired and bruised and covered with cum. 

He’s going to be so annoyed in the morning, when he wakes up sore and sticky and with, like, the most tangled sex hair ever. He’ll probably come up with a whole paragraph of new insults. Sylvain, honestly, can’t wait. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please applaud for Felix. He had a very hard time talking about his emotions. Such a hard time that I just wrote a literal fifty thousand words of character development to get him to this point. 
> 
> I've been incredibly excited to post this one for a while now, and it's been half-written for like a month. Hopefully it lives up to your expectations. I can't look at it anymore; words all sound the same to me now. Let me know if you like it. 
> 
> Next week's update will probably be on the short side, because this was A Lot. 
> 
> As always, I'm [thecaryatid](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid) on twitter.


	16. Waking

Waking up is, at best, unfortunate. His back hurts, his thighs ache, and even through his closed eyelids Felix can tell he’s missed his usual break-of-dawn wakeup time. His skin feels dry and crusted; his hair is oily and tangled. A warm hand is running over his shoulders. 

Felix rolls onto his back. The hand settles on his cheek instead, rubbing little circles. He opens his eyes. 

Sylvain’s propped up next to him, stroking his cheek, grinning like he’s incredibly smug about tiring Felix out so much he slept past dawn. 

“Morning, kitten,” Sylvain says, gently pushing Felix’s tangled hair back from his face. 

“Morning,” Felix says. Or tries to say, but it comes out more like “Mrng.” He coughs. 

If possible, Sylvain’s grin gets wider. “Yeah, I really wrecked you.” He trails a finger down Felix’s throat. “How’s a warm bath sound, kitten?” 

That nickname again. Felix hates it, a little, in that it’s warm and soft and cute, defenseless and fluffy. He likes it, a lot, in that Sylvain smiles when he says it and thinks it’s a cute word to apply to Felix’s barbs, and in that he’s never heard Sylvain say it to anyone else. 

“Fuck,” he says. It was supposed to be  _ fuck you _ , but Felix decides halfway through that speaking in anything but monosyllables is not worth it. The bath sounds better and better. It’s a couple hours before there’s anything specific he has to do; they have time. 

“You definitely need a bath.” Sylvain thumbs over the crusting on his stomach. It’s cum. It is Felix’s own cum, which Sylvain is rubbing at with a look of delighted amusement. 

“Nnnng,” Felix says in wordless, embarrassed protest. 

When Sylvain stands up Felix gets a perfect view of everything, his soft cock, the ginger hair spread coarse over his legs and groin, the bruises left by Felix’s fingers on his thighs and by Felix’s teeth on his chest and neck. It’s perfect. Soreness aside, Felix wouldn’t mind doing that every night. He certainly wouldn’t mind waking up next to an amorous Sylvain covered in his marks. 

“Bath,” Felix agrees. He’s picked unceremoniously up, held in Sylvain’s strong arms. “Fuck  _ you _ ,” he says, managing both words this time, and then immediately relaxes into it. 

“Trust me, you don’t want to walk until you loosen up.” 

“And whose fault would you say that is?” Felix’s throat is still sore but it’s getting progressively easier to talk. 

“I mean, you were going to strangle me if I didn’t fuck you, so…” Sylvain grins, bright and wild. “Pretty sure I get a free pass for being a little rough when you were begging me.” 

“You were the one begging.” Felix orders, argues, and occasionally coaxes. He does not beg. He is, he decides all at once, not going to beg for Sylvain unless he damn well feels like it. 

Sylvain dumps him into the bath just as abruptly as he was picked up. The water isn’t heated yet; Felix makes a shocked squeaking sound that he will forever deny, curling in against the cold. Sylvain takes a moment to laugh soft and deep before coaxing the fire enchantment to life, the bastard. He doesn’t get into the bath until the water is good and warm.

“What can I say? I’m easy for you.” Sylvain slips his arms around Felix from behind, not at all shy, pressing half-hard against Felix. “And also hard for you. Pretty much constantly.” 

It’s ridiculous. Sylvain, pressed warm against him, grinding lazily against Felix’s ass and tracing all the lines of his chest, stopping to pinch and squeeze whenever he feels like it, exploring in comfortable curiosity instead of desperate pleasure. He’s mouthing at the side of Felix’s neck, making contented little sighs. 

Between the warm water and Sylvain’s lazy affection Felix already feels better, sore muscles relaxing slowly. Felix also relaxes, curling closer against Sylvain, reaching up and stroking his jaw, coaxing him into a kiss. Sylvain’s beard is scratchy, a pleasing counterpoint to the softness of his mouth. Sylvain laughs when they part and kisses the tip of Felix’s nose, turning him around in the water. 

They grind comfortably against each other, kissing and groping with no sense of urgency. Felix starts getting acquainted with the exact shape of Sylvain, memorizing the slopes of his scarred sides and then stroking his thumbs over Sylvain’s nipples. He makes a delighted little whimper back in his throat when Felix flicks them, and whimpers louder when Felix kisses one and carefully licks it. He lavishes it with care, licking and sucking until Sylvain’s whimpers get louder, and then pulling away to press chaste kisses to the center of Sylvain’s chest. 

“You know, I thought you’d be too impatient to tease,” Sylvain grumbles into his ear. His thrusts are harder now. He wraps a hand in Felix’s tangled hair and pulls, forcing Felix’s head back and leaning in for another kiss. 

This one’s deeper; Sylvain’s getting back to the all-consuming kisses he’d used last night, and Felix closes his eyes and lets Sylvain take. There will be time to memorize the shape of Sylvain later, perhaps even tonight. For now there are insistent hands pulling his head back and reaching down to stroke both of their cocks, an insistent tongue trying to taste all that Felix is. 

It’s overwhelming. Everything about Sylvain is overwhelming, always, in his size and voice and the shape of his true smile, in the warmth of his arms and the roughness of his skin and the gentleness of his hands. He makes Felix weak by existing, by inviting the confession of all Felix’s fears and coaxing him into admitting the ragged edges of his heartbeat. He makes Felix a fool, and yet. 

Kissing Sylvain is easy, simple, safe. 

He moans into the kiss and catches Sylvain’s answering laugh, resonating through them both. He bucks harder into Sylvain’s hand, chasing the firmness of a broad palm on fevered skin. Sylvain could stand to be a little rougher, Felix decides in the moment before he comes. He’d like to see Sylvain a little less gentle, a little less careful. Still, this is more than enough. Felix goes limp when he comes, loses himself in the sharp spike of pleasure and lets himself be guided forward, slumped against Syvlain’s shoulder. 

“Will you always be like this?” He asks once words seem achievable again. 

Sylvain gently begins working his fingers through Felix’s hair, smoothing out tangle after tangle. “Oh, definitely. I figure I want to fuck you at least once for every time I’ve daydreamed about it, and at the rate of twice a day that should last… a few decades.” 

“You’ve thought about this a lot.” 

“Mmm. Is that a problem, kitten?” 

It is not a problem. That name again though - that might be a problem. “Decades, you say.” 

Sylvain tucks Felix even closer. “Decades. With you and only you,” he says, the bristles of his beard scratching against Felix’s cheek. 

Decades of mornings spent with warm kisses and lazy sex, with flirtatious, insistent, obnoxious Sylvain. Felix longs for more hot baths and soft blankets, breakfast together and sparring together and softening the edges of each other’s scars - all weak, unnecessary things. 

But weak, unnecessary things that Sylvain so clearly needs, that Felix so clearly wants. 

Felix’s hands curl around Sylvain’s. “Decades,” he says, an agreement, a promise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to me; I wrote self-indulgent bath scene number 3. Please enjoy.


	17. Announcements

Sylvain’s pulling on his boots and staring both at Felix’s ass and at the way he’s pretending he doesn’t want to spend the rest of the day in bed.

“How about I tell everyone you’ve fallen desperately ill and need to be nursed back to health, in private, by me?” He tries. Felix’s silence is it’s own response, since there’s no doubting that Felix heard him. 

“Or I could make you stay. Pin you down, keep you from leaving.”

Felix snorts. “You couldn’t.” 

Not even _ you wouldn’t _ or _ you shouldn’t_, no hint of hesitation. 

“But Felix,” Sylvain whines, since whining has gotten very good results in the recent past, “I want to keep holding you.” 

“That sounds like your problem,” Felix says. But then he deposits himself in Sylvain’s lap. “Put my hair up.” 

“Yeah,” Sylvain breathes, kissing the back of Felix’s neck and giving a little squeeze to his thighs before taking the ribbon he’s offered. Felix’s hair is still damp, but his usual style is so disastrous it won’t make a difference. It’s even worse in Sylvain’s hands - he still hasn’t figured out the secret of Felix’s hair. “Want to show me how you do it?” He asks, batting at Felix’s little ponytail. It’s off-center. 

“Figure it out.” 

“I mean, I’m trying, but this probably looks bad. You sure you won’t let me braid it this time?” He’s good at braids and Felix would look so nice in one, bangs tucked away from his face so nothing’s obscuring all the fine angles of his cheekbones. So pretty. Then again, Sylvain will have a hard enough time not groping him in the middle of the hall as it is, so maybe it’s for the best. 

“No,” Felix says like he’s personally offended. What does he have against wearing a braid? “Come on, we’re going to be late.” 

Right, right. Annette practically threatened Felix into having a late breakfast with her and Mercedes. She probably meant it as an hour for Felix to complain about that private meeting the king had talked him into. How’d that go, anyway?

“Yeah, yeah, can’t keep Mercedes waiting.” But Sylvain holds Felix a little closer. If he just stayed like this, arms around Felix’s waist, would Felix still leave? Or would he stay, playing along, let Sylvain coax him into another hour happy and alone? 

“Hey Fe, are we gonna tell them?” It’s not something they’ve discussed. They haven’t had time to talk about it, the exact nature of their relationship and what they plan to present to the world. Sylvain would like nothing more than to drag Felix out into the main hall and kiss him breathless in full view of everyone, until all of Faerghus knows Sylvain belongs to him. 

Felix, though… there’s a worm of doubt in Sylvain’s heart. Ruling is hard enough on Felix, commanding the respect of Fraldarius is difficult without adding Sylvain into the mix. Not that he thinks Felix is ashamed of him. But also - really, what if Felix is embarrassed by him? Not in the cute, blushy way, but in the way where Sylvain used to hit on everything that moved and there will no doubt be whispers about his new conquest, about if Felix is getting set up to be used and discarded. And, when he puts it that way, why wouldn’t Felix be ashamed of him? 

“I mean, we don’t have to. Only if you want. It’s okay if we keep it a secret.” The words come in a rush, after a half-second of silence that stretched out into a pit of buried self-loathing. “You don’t need to admit we’re together.” Felix is looking down at him now, frowning in consternation. Sylvain’s smile must be the wrong one, because the frown freezes into real anger. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Nothing. Just, you know, if you don’t want to admit we’re together, I’d understand.” He’d hate it, but he would understand. 

Felix is glaring, forcing his chin up, not letting him look away. “And why would I want to not admit that?” 

“You know. Because I’m…” _ a womanizer_, _ an embarrassment_, _ a man who ran away from his own territory _. 

“Because you’re _ what _ ,” Felix snaps, low and dangerous. His eyes get all narrow and bright when he’s like this. It would be hot, if it weren’t directed at _ him_. 

“A fuckup?” Sylvain tries, softening the admission with a crooked little smile he knows girls find charming. 

Felix does not seem to find it charming. “Of course. That’s what you think.” And, wow, that’s a lot of disdain packed into a few words. The best thing that’s ever happened to Sylvain, and he’s already found a way to ruin it. 

“Yeah, so should I just go, or -” 

“Shut _ up_,” Felix says, still sharp with anger, and puts a hand over his mouth. “You’re an idiot. You’re a fool and I’m not going to let whatever you think of yourself ruin this, understand? We have decades together. Why wouldn’t we tell people _ now_?” 

It’s as passionate as he’s ever heard Felix be. Which is nice, not just in the sexy way but also in the being-cared-about-as-a-person way. Sylvain licks Felix’s palm. 

“Ew,” Felix says, and wipes it off on Sylvain’s shirt. It’s a ridiculous reaction, considering. Sylvain might laugh about it at some later date. 

“So you’re not ashamed of me?” It’s a heavy thing to say, a heavy thing to answer. 

“No!” That’s Felix’s really pissed-off glare, the one he wears before battles and that one time someone made Annette cry. At Sylvain, yes, but at the idea that Sylvain might _ not be enough _for Felix. 

“You really love me?” Sylvain’s sure he knows the answer to this one. Still. 

“Have you been concussed? I made myself clear.” All of the fight leaves Felix between one breath and the next, draining out and leaving the curve of his mouth sharp in pain instead of anger. “Of course I love you. Or I wouldn’t be here.” 

Here, in Sylvain’s lap, being as reassuring as he knows how, being progressively later to his best friend’s breakfast. Yeah. When he puts it like that it seems silly that Sylvain could have doubted. 

“Yeah, you really do.” He kisses Felix’s cheek. Felix is so good, so beautiful, trying so hard to give Sylvain everything he needs. “I think I needed to hear you say it again.” 

Felix nods, standing up and pulling Sylvain with him. “I love you. Now hurry _ up_.” 

But when they enter the hallway Felix lingers, staring at the floor, offering a hand palm-up to Sylvain. It’s such an obvious gesture, but it still takes a minute to connect the universal language for _ hold my hand _ to _ Felix_, glowering downwards with his shoulders tensed. 

And Sylvain’s never been one to refuse an invitation, particularly from Felix, even before they became lovers - mmm, he and Felix are _ lovers_, and they’re going to _ tell people_. He is Felix’s, body and soul, so Sylvain grabs the hand and laces their fingers together. Felix flushes pink - good - and his shoulders untense - great. 

“I adore you,” Sylvain says, because he really does mean it. He’s also still enamored with Felix’s blush, and he would have ranked holding Felix’s hand while strolling through town as slightly less likely than fucking him in the middle of a crowded audience chamber. 

There are a few odd looks from people who notice their entwined hands, but honestly? Now that Sylvain’s gotten some reassurance? All of Fraldarius probably thinks they’ve been fucking for ages, what with Sylvain’s habit of showing up in Felix’s chambers and refusing to leave. So he just gives a cheeky grin to the ones who stare. Felix misses it entirely, gaze glued to the ground. 

“So what can I call you? Do I get to introduce you as my _ lover_?” He’s sort of expecting an instant refusal. 

“Fine,” Felix says, inflectionless. 

Huh. _ Nice _. “My love, my life, my heart? My sweet stabby darling? My kitten?” 

It’s surprising that the grinding of Felix’s teeth isn’t audible by the end. “Save the last one for private.” 

“The last one… which one was that again, sweetheart?” He’s noticed how Felix twitches at being called kitten, like he’s trying to hide just how much he loves it.

It’s just a glare this time, like _you know exactly what I’m talking about_.

“Anything you want.” And, yeah, it would be fun to call Felix _ kitten _ in front of their friends and watch their jaws drop. It would also be fun - romantic even, delightful - to save it for their more heated moments, until Felix squirms just from hearing the word. Sylvain squeezes his hand and catches the edge of Felix’s smile, private and reserved and directed only at the ground. 

* * *

They’re late. Always early or late. Felix has never once arrived at Annette’s at the agreed-upon time, and at this point he isn’t sure why she bothers to specify a time at all. 

Actually, he knows why. It’s so Annette can blame him when the food isn’t ready. 

He knocks with his left hand. The right is still holding on to Sylvain, whose self-loathing just became the thing Felix hates most.

A child answers the door. Of course. Logistics finally got sorted out so Mercedes and Annette could start hosting children, and now there is a grubby eight-year-old gawping at Duke Fraldarius holding hands with the Gautier heir. 

“I’m looking for Annette.” 

The child runs off, wordless, so Felix chooses to assume Annette will be alerted to their presence. Do children gossip? How long until every person on the block is whispering about them? Not that it matters, now that Felix agreed to _ tell people_. He’ll have to tell Dimitri, notify a few key ambassadors, speak to Sylvain’s parents. 

Felix’s private life is, in his opinion, absolutely no one’s business. Who he does or doesn’t fuck is not a fit subject for curiosity. Unfortunately, a long-term commitment between a Duke and a future Margrave _ is _ everyone’s business. It’s a political matter. And Felix would have ignored that for a few more months, except for Sylvain looking up at him like he expected to be kicked out. 

The insufferable, weak idiot, as though Felix would let go of him that easily. So it’s to be gossip and announcements; fine. He’ll survive, if it keeps Sylvain from wearing more of those brittle smiles. 

There’s a scant few inches of space between them already. Felix takes a half-step closer, dropping Sylvain’s hand and wrapping an arm around his waist instead, testing it out. Sylvain jolts in surprise and presses instantly closer, slinging his own arm around Felix’s neck and palming at his chest.

Good, then. 

They stand. The moments of silence are pleasant, at least for Felix. He suspects they’re pleasant for Sylvain, too. He certainly looks like he’s enjoying being the first and only person allowed to get handsy with Felix in public. 

“Annette,” Felix says dryly when the door opens again. 

“You’re late this time.” She doesn’t even look questioningly between him and Sylvain. Of course. 

“It was a personal matter,” he says with the great amount of diplomacy he’s gained from two months of government. 

Now, of course, she does stare between them. “What sort of personal matter?” Felix can hear the despairing judgement she’s trying to keep out of her voice. 

That song, the one about emotionally incompetent swordmasters, had been something. Impeccable meter, catchy tune. Felix had it running through his head for an entire afternoon. But he doesn’t answer, just squeezes Sylvain’s side as they’re led to the kitchen. Felix gave permission to be introduced as his lover, after all, and he expected Sylvain to blurt it out as soon as they got within shouting distance of literally anyone they knew. But he’s being oddly quiet again, resting his hand on Felix’s shoulder now like anything else might be too familiar. 

It isn’t too familiar. This is less than Sylvain did before Felix broke down and fucked him. Sylvain spent an entire week draping himself over Felix in public and private, pulling him into lingering hugs and rubbing his shoulders and tugging at his hair. Felix’s hand resting on Sylvain’s waist is unusual, of course; Felix was never the touchy-feely one. Sylvain’s hesitance is odd. 

Well. If this is about Sylvain’s whole complex about being _ an embarrassment _ there’s really no other option. Not that he isn’t embarrassing - in the easy, mundane way, where he laughs too loud and tells too many suggestive jokes. In the way Felix reluctantly finds endearing because it comes attached to everything else about Sylvain. 

“You’ll need to rewrite your last song,” he says to Annette. Sylvain looks down uncomprehendingly. 

“Really? Is there any actual evidence of improvement on that front?” Annette says. Sylvain cuddling up against Felix really is that unremarkable. 

He takes three very careful breaths. It’s Annette, just Annette standing in her and Mercedes’s warm little kitchen, who will write any number of songs mocking him and then give advice and sympathy over a plate of goat cheese tarts. And, well, the news will come out eventually, and he’d prefer to control the place and time. 

“Sylvain is my lover.” There; no going back. 

And Annette’s gaping in delighted surprise but Sylvain’s still quiet, why is he still _ quiet _ , he’s always been the loudest person Felix knows, surely he didn’t think Felix was _ joking _ about telling people, and the uncertain tension returns to Felix’s shoulders - 

There’s a delighted yell. It’s too loud against the walls. Hands pick Felix up like he isn’t made of heavy, compact muscle, catching him so he’s looking down at a grinning Sylvain. 

A grinning, crying Sylvain, who’s blinking away tears and doesn’t seem to care, who’s keeping Felix pressed tight against his chest. 

“You meant it. You meant everything, Fe, you -” Sylvain words get lost in laughter and in the million little kisses he’s pressing to the side of Felix’s neck. 

“_Why wouldn't I have meant it _ -” fond, livid, and relieved all at once. It’s a combination of emotions he should probably get used to feeling. Sylvain is an idiot. 

“I know, you’re always serious, but still -” another bout of laughter, three more chaste kisses against the base of Felix’s jaw - “you’re going to get so sick of this. I’m going to tell everyone you’re my lover.” 

“I already told you to do that, _ you idiot_.” 

The other door opens. 

“Has something happened? I thought I heard a scream.” Mercedes, of course, returned from whatever task she’d been doing while waiting for him. 

“Hey Mercedes! Felix is my _ lover_.” Sylvain draws out the word lasciviously, wrapping his tongue around the soft consonants. He’s right, Felix is going to get _ so _tired of this. It’s fine; Sylvain can put up with Felix’s annoyance. 

It’s all absurd. Felix was very clear about this. He took Annette’s advice, talked about his emotions, vocalized his desires. Sylvain’s just a fool. 

But a happy fool, warmed and reassured, herding Felix into a too-small chair in the glow of Annette’s grin and Mercedes smile. 

So of course he’s coaxed into Sylvain's lap again, tensing and hesitating. He looks around - Annette and Mercedes; Sylvain looking up with a worried smile, reaching but not holding. Nothing to fear, not really. Felix relaxes, lets Sylvain’s hands rest at his waist, blushes at how Sylvain instantly lights up. He is easy for Felix, isn’t he, in every possible way. 

_ And you didn’t tell me _? Annette mouths at him. And, out loud, “So when did this happen?” 

“Yes, you must tell us everything,” Mercedes says. She pulls Annette closer too, until the two pairs are cuddled up at opposite ends of the table. 

“Well? Tell them,” Felix says to Sylvain. An order, a request, permission. Sylvain looks up like he’s the moon on a dark night. And then, because he’s Sylvain, he grins wide and laughs. 

“You sure, sweetheart? I’m going to include a few of the -” he winks - “salacious details.” 

“Just get it over with.” 

* * *

And then the afternoon meetings. It’s audience day, when Felix makes himself available to hear even the most petty, ridiculous complaints. Today Sylvain perches by the side of Felix’s chair, twining his hand with Felix’s, listening intently. Occasionally he asks a clarifying question or whispers a suggestion - things that seem designed to untangle the threads of an impossible situation, like he’s reading out solutions to a puzzle long since solved. 

He didn’t ask to sit in exactly, just smiled at Felix and said “so I should get a little more acquainted with your territory.” 

Felix nodded and ushered him into the audience hall. No one openly questions why the Gautier heir is sitting in on Fraldarius audiences, but of course they’re all drawing the same conclusion.

* * *

And, even after that, it's still not over. They've told Annette and Mercedes. Half of Fraldarius must have guessed by now, and perhaps before now, but definitely now that Sylvain spent an entire afternoons audience hanging off of Felix. 

Tomorrow they’ll need to tell Dimitri, once he’s back from touring the countryside and reassuring the people that the king is listening to their concerns; tomorrow he should talk to Ashe and Dedue, congratulate them and catch up on their months apart. Tomorrow he should send a letter to Ingrid. Although it’s also tempting _ not _to tell her and wait until she hears from someone else, flies halfway across Faerghus, and kicks down Felix’s door.

There's nothing he wants more than to shove his paperwork to the side and collapse into Sylvain's arms again, let him show Felix a few more of the things he's dreamed of doing. A small part of him is worried about how in the space of less than two days it's already become a habit. But he's too tired to fear that - he’s already spent years pushing away the same set of feelings, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad. 

There's one more announcement that he should have thought about first, before going out and frivolously telling the world.

So Felix sits, and ignores Sylvain's insistence for just a few more minutes, and drafts a letter to House Gautier. 

"Read this. Tell me what you think," he finally snaps to Sylvain. Too demanding? Maybe. It's a hurried draft, further obscured by his own nervousness. It's a letter he wishes he wasn't obligated to write. 

And when he puts it like that, it's probably a good thing they went and told everyone else. It makes this unavoidable. 

Sylvain leans over his shoulder curiously. He hadn't realized what Felix is working on, and when he reads the first few lines he darkens before cracking open his worst smile. 

"Didn't realize you needed to ask my parents permission, Felix." 

No cute nickname, no gentle touches, no softening kiss. Felix always hated it when Sylvain went smooth and masked like this. He hates it even more now. 

"I'm not asking their permission. I'm informing them." And, continuing recklessly, "Don't do that. Don't go cold like that. I hate it." 

Sylvain closes his eyes. When he opens them again they're less of a mask. Not perfect, but good enough for now. 

“So you’re _ informing _ my parents that you’re _ courting me_.” 

“Shut up.” He shoves at Sylvain’s shoulder. “I’m trying to do this properly. Did you have any suggestions on the wording?” 

“Fine. Fine,” Sylvain rubs at his eyes. “Right, you’re a duke, we need to tell them. Look, if you send a letter they’ll just demand to see us in person.” 

“I imagine we’ll deal with that when it happens.” Dueling the elder Gautiers would be a terrible idea. So would insulting them, snubbing them, or otherwise offending them. Things were simpler during the war, when Felix could stab his way through his problems. 

“You’re really taking this seriously, aren’t you, honeybuns.” 

Felix bristles at the name and softens at the smile it comes with. “Of course I am. _ You _need to take it seriously.” 

Sylvain drags Felix’s chair - with him in it - further from the desk. Getting manhandled by Sylvain is just part of daily life now; he’ll have to adjust to the way it always makes him twitch. Then Sylvain nudges his legs apart and kneels down, pressing his face into Felix’s stomach and hugging him tight. 

“I am. I really am, Fe. I'm yours. Look, we should just get it over with. Ride up to Gautier, tell them, see if they disown me.” 

“They won’t disown you.” 

Sylvain’s laugh is utterly humorless. “Well, yeah, I’m their little crested heir, they can’t disown me. It’s still going to suck.” 

It is. They’ll probably insist on a formal meal, filled with careful words and double meanings, and Felix will have to keep himself from stabbing either of them. But, well, they can figure out the details later. 

“We’ll arrange the details in the morning?” 

Sylvain nods. “Yeah. In the morning, Fe.” Considering his position kneeling between Felix’s legs, nothing seems very sexual right now. Odd for Sylvain in general; odder still for Sylvain alone with Felix. 

He’s not sure he’s doing the right thing when he speaks up, but Felix has, all day, been looking forward to being alone with Sylvain. 

“You said you’ve dreamed of me for years. I hoped you’d show me more of the things you wanted to do.” It’s needlessly evasive, uncertainty hiding under impassiveness. Felix has his own masks, less sophisticated than Sylvain’s but equally present. “I would enjoy that.” It’s harder to request now that he’s out of the heated desperation of last night. 

“Like, sexually?” Sylvain drawls, and snickers. 

Felix sighs. “As in sexually.” He lets Sylvain have his moment of laughter. 

“The answer to that’s always going to be yes, kitten,” Sylvain says. “Hey, you take the lead. You know how you were being an obnoxious little tease this morning? Do more of that. And then fuck me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love how Sylvain and Felix are emotionally fucked up in completely different ways. Anyway, what would a long Sylvix fic be without unpacking a little of Sylvain's issues with self-loathing and feeling used?
> 
> Despite that! Felix and Sylvain are together to stay at this point. This is not a fic where they break up and then get back together in the last chapter. I just have a lot to say about their life as a couple, and a bunch of conversations to write, and quite a bit of smut. 
> 
> Listen, the next chapter probably starts with the sex scene. It was supposed to go in this chapter, but it's been a long week. I got stuck in an airport yesterday. You'll have to wait. 
> 
> Yell about fire emblem with me [on twitter.](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid)


	18. Preparations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: smut, breathplay - skip to the first break if that's not your thing - and Sylvain's casual self-loathing.

Sylvain sprawls out under Felix, naked and vulnerable. Not vulnerable because of the nakedness - Felix imagines he’s used to that - but because of his willingness to let Felix take whatever he wants. He encouraged it, almost demanded to indulge any of Felix’s whims as long as it ends with Sylvain being fucked. Not that Felix’s whims are anything outlandish at the moment. Sylvain’s spread out across the bed, promising Felix anything, and honestly? Felix just wants to touch him. 

And fuck him, a bit later. But there’s so much of Sylvain and he’s never had the freedom to do this, to kiss his way across Sylvain’s chest and drag his fingertips over his ribs. Maybe this is unusual for Sylvain as well. Perhaps it’s strange for his partner to take his time, to be gentle and slow. 

There are no complaints so far, and Felix hasn’t done much of anything besides admire and listen to Sylvain’s repeated assurance that he’s _ Felix’s_. 

He leans down to kiss Sylvain’s lips, carefully nipping at the bottom one and licking hesitantly between them. Sylvain opens easily, matches Felix’s rhythm, for once doesn't try to take over the kiss. _ For once _ \- out of a sample of not so many kisses, but still.

He’s so beautiful, pliant and willing, letting Felix take his time in kissing down one side of his throat, winding a hand through his hair, stopping to leave too many marks. Sylvain sighs and shifts, moans encouragingly, whispers Felix’s name. 

Felix is quickly getting addicted to the sound of his name on Sylvain’s lips. Every repetition is a prayer and a promise, and it comes at even the simplest things, at Felix circling his thumb around a nipple, scraping blunt fingertips through Sylvain’s beard, kissing his forehead. 

It’s - goddess, untouched and all he’s hard, mostly from the way Sylvain says his name. Felix feels wanted and welcomed, but those words are too small to encompass everything in his heart with Sylvain looking up, honey-gold eyes half closed, Felix’s name constant on his lips. 

Sylvain’s existence carved a hollow in the world where Felix is safe from the thousands of things that tried to kill him. He’s not just wanted; he’s held, protected, gifted to and worshiped. Sylvain doesn't even jolt when Felix rests a hand on his throat, stroking a thumb over the point of his pulse and admiring the line where the bristles of his beard start to thin out. Sylvain shifts back further, tilting his head to let Felix grab wherever he wants. 

For some reason bearing down is tempting, and Sylvain’s pressing himself into Felix’s hand, offering. He hesitates anyway. 

“Sylvain.” 

Sylvain tilts his head questioningly. 

“I don't want you to feel used,” Felix says, tracing fingertips over his skin. 

But Sylvain blinks, laughs like that’s the last thing he expected, presses his hand over Felix’s where it rests on his throat. 

“You couldn’t make me feel used if you tried, kitten.” He guides Felix’s thumb back to right above the pulse. “Go on. Don’t you want to take my breath away?” 

Always such stupid lines. Sylvain wants this though, wants to be helpless for Felix, and Felix… well. The thought is growing on him. 

He squeezes, just for a second, cutting off the middle of Sylvain’s gasp. It’s only an instant before he lets go, hears the soft whoosh of Sylvain’s breath resuming, a little terrified he’s hurt. 

Sylvain moans. “Do that again.” 

Felix does, holds on a second longer until Sylvain’s eyelids flutter and his mouth gapes open, releases. Sylvain moans again, whines when he draws in his next breath, stays open and relaxed through Felix’s hands on his throat. 

Felix _ likes _having this sort of power, and he isn’t sure how to feel about that. He doesn’t know how to feel about his sudden longing for Sylvain’s hands on his neck as well, to surrender and surrender. He’ll figure it out later. There’s time. 

He uses some of that time to kiss back down, leaving Sylvain’s throat perfect and unbruised for one more night. It’s the only unmarked thing, though - he can’t resist stopping to leave marks everywhere his eye catches, over freckles and scars, and little ridges where Sylvain’s muscles look particularly pleasing. 

Sylvain’s whimpering by the time Felix gets anywhere near his cock. Little sounds that could just be noise but are probably repetitions of “Felix”, too drawn out to be recognized. 

Even needy like this Sylvain doesn’t fight. He lets Felix take and take, offers everything, spreads his legs with a relieved little moan when Felix finally reaches his cock. 

Felix strokes it a few times, watching it twitch, smiling against the the whine it draws from Sylvain. His head’s thrown back now, eyes mostly closed, hands clenching and unclenching in the sheets like he’ll die if he doesn’t touch something. 

“You’re mine,” Felix says experimentally, trailing a finger over Sylvain’s dick. 

Sylvain’s voice _ breaks _ in the middle of his whine, and he rocks up just as Felix pulls away. 

“Yours. Only yours,” Sylvain agrees, breathless. The whimpers he makes between the words go straight to Felix’s dick. 

“Fuck me, Felix, please fuck me,” unraveling into a mindless chant of “please, please, please”. Or possibly “Fe, Fe, Fe.” Sylvain isn't enunciating clearly at the moment. 

He’ll have to wait a bit longer. Felix hasn’t even prepped him yet, and besides, he was promised he could tease as long as he wanted. 

Although admittedly it’s incredible that Sylvain has indulged him so long. He isn’t bound; he could get up from his careful repose and tackle Felix down at any time. 

Perhaps next time Felix should bind him. 

But his own patience is running out. He pops open a bottle of lube - Sylvain goes quiet and draws a leg up to his chest at the sound, giving Felix access to everything. 

“Good,” Felix says. Sylvain sighs contentedly. His eyes seem to go glassy and distant at even the simplest praise. “You like being good for me, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, yeah. ‘M yours,” Sylvain says, a little slurred, soft and delighted with trust. 

Felix slicks up a hand and presses a finger carefully at Sylvain’s entrance, watching for a reaction. There’s no flinch, no sudden tenseness, just hips twitching up to meet him with a low groan. 

He presses in. Felix is gentler than he is when he fingers himself, or with the handful of people he fucked during the war. Sylvain’s experienced; he could probably take it rougher, and Felix likes roughness, leaving bruises and pulling hair. Sylvain seems to like that too, but - Sylvain loves softness, being held and told he’s loved and taken care of. So Felix starts much slower than necessary, working for a good long time before he adds a second finger. 

“You really are a tease,” Sylvain says as Felix’s fingers brush over his prostate with the faintest pressure. 

Perhaps he is. 

“Come onnnn,” Sylvain finally whines, restraint not broken but starting to fray. “More. Please, more.” 

“Can’t you be patient?” Felix is just getting the hang of how to make Sylvain squirm. “For me?” He drags his fingers in and out slowly again.

Sylvain gulps. “For you. Just for you. I’m patient.” 

He stays quiet except for his whines until Felix works a third finger inside. He’s not even sure it’s necessary, Sylvain’s so relaxed and open, but he’s being thorough. And, yes, perhaps taking too much joy in the exact tenor of Sylvain’s need. 

“Felix, kitten, I’m so ready for you, I’ll make you feel so good,” Sylvain babbles on and on. He gets louder when he’s being denied. “You’re all I want, _ please_,” trailing off into more gasping whimpers. 

“You beg so easily,” Felix muses. It almost takes some of the fun away, how a little bit of waiting is all Sylvain needs to plead. On the other hand, his begging is sending frissons of pleasure down Felix’s spine. He likes it more and more the more he hears. 

“I do, I do, anything for you.” Sylvain’s looking up with these big hungry eyes, focused so intently on Felix it feels profane. 

“I like it,” Felix decides. “Go on. Keep begging.” 

Sylvain’s wounded little _ noise _ is the best thing he’s ever heard, until Sylvain starts begging in earnest, and that becomes the best thing Felix has ever heard. 

“Felix, _ please_, I’ll take you so well, you’ll feel so good inside me, I want - I want you to fill me with your come, I want your cock, want to feel you every time I move tomorrow, _ Felix _-”

Felix cuts him off with a crook of his fingers. Sylvain’s gasp cuts through his rambling, the sudden arch of his back driving Felix in deeper. 

“Yes,” Sylvain sighs, and Felix pulls his hand away.

“Fe,” Sylvain says. It’s almost a sob. “You’re gonna fuck me, right?” 

“Maybe,” Felix says, pretending to consider it. “If you show me how eager you are.” He sits back, not sure what he’s looking for or what Sylvain will give him, but hungry to find out. 

Sylvain gapes up at him and Felix feels the unfamiliar thrill of triumph that even like this, in an area that is unquestionably Sylvain’s domain, Felix is capable of surprising him. 

“Yeah,” Sylvain says faintly. He’s finally lost his ability to babble inanely. His fingers reach down to press at his own entrance, shoving three in without any preamble. Sylvain shifts his hips up and spreads his fingers as much as he can. 

“See? See how ready I am? I’ll open easy for you. Just for you.” Sylvain’s hips fall back to the bed, exhausted by his effort. “Please,” Sylvain says once more, soft and defeated. 

Felix’s own patience finally wears out. He slicks up his cock, folds Sylvain’s legs closer to his chest - “Yes, thank you, thank you,” Sylvain whimpers when he does - and presses in as gently as he can. Even Felix’s gentlest isn’t all that slow or careful. He’s trying. Sylvain doesn’t seem to mind, since he’s already grasping at Felix and moaning, head thrown back. He’s so _ loud_. 

And Felix also moans, softer than Sylvain but no less fervent. It’s the first time he’s sheathed himself inside Sylvain. It lives up to the wait. He’s perfect, warm and yielding, wrapped around Felix with no room for thought or hesitation.

“Sylvain.” Felix grasps one last thought back before letting himself sink into oblivion, “can I-” 

Sylvain, thank everything, seems to read Felix’s mind. 

“Felix, _ Felix_, hard as you can, _ please_.” 

Felix does not thrust as hard as he can - he’s not trying to actually break Sylvain. But he doesn’t hold back much either. 

Sylvain gasps and lies back, uttering half-fragments of sentences every time Felix presses against his prostate. They're too broken for Felix to pick apart, but he catches syllables of his own name, and _ kitten_, and _ yes_. It takes so _ little _to turn Sylvain wordless and gasping. 

He doesn’t last very long, spills inside Sylvain and pulls out against his protesting moan. 

“Feliiiix,” Sylvain says, spreading his knees further and wriggling. It’s probably supposed to be enticing, but his cock bobbing over his stomach is mostly just laughable. 

“What do you want, Sylvain?” Felix strokes his cheek. 

“I wanna come.” Sylvain wriggles more, shamelessly displaying his swollen cock. 

He’s so dense sometimes. “How do you want me to finish you?” Felix asks, patient and generous and thrilling with his ability to make Sylvain helpless. 

Sylvain looks like the last of his ability to think shuts down all at once. “Uh.”

That’s fine. Languid and tired as he is, patience is easy to reach for. Felix strokes Sylvain’s jaw and waits for him to process. 

“In your mouth,” Sylvain says, and then, “In your throat.” 

Felix hums, pulls back to take a look at Sylvain’s cock. It’s large. It seems more intimidating right now than it did last night, when he so determinedly took Sylvain. But he did it once, he can do it again. 

Sylvain asks a worried question that first time Felix starts to gag and then laughs when Felix just glares up with his mouth still around Sylvain’s dick. 

“Don’t hurt yourself, kitten,” Sylvain says, raising his hands in surrender, and goes back to moaning. 

Finally Felix manages it, takes Sylvain until his nose is almost pressed to the little nest of ginger hair and he’s only choking a little. Sylvain comes almost instantly, tugging Felix’s hair and spilling delighted whimpers while his come fills Felix’s mouth. 

With all the dignity he can muster Felix sits up, tries to swallow, and then coughs half of it onto Sylvain’s stomach. 

“Gross,” Sylvain slurs and then pulls Felix down, curls up with his face pressed into the hollow of Felix’s neck. “You need practice.” 

There’s a moment of instinctive anger at hearing that Felix is inadequate at some task he cares about. But Sylvain doesn’t actually _ mind _ \- Sylvain’s happy and satisfied, cuddling closer heedless of the mess on his stomach and leaking out of his ass. 

“You just want more blowjobs,” Felix says, combing his fingers through Sylvain’s hair. 

“Yeah, you saw right through me.” Sylvain opens his eyes long enough to aim a kiss at Felix’s mouth, chaste and close-mouthed, and then another lazy and sloppy. “That was good,” he mumbles. “You’re so good. Did you like bossing me around, kitten?” 

“I liked it,” Felix says around the hoarseness of his throat. 

“Good. Perfect,” Sylvain grins and noses at Felix’s neck. “I love how bossy you get. I love _ you_.” 

“Mmm,” Felix says, distant and distracted by the feel of Sylvain’s beard on his skin. “The beard's nice.” 

“Knew you’d be into that. Bet you can’t wait to find out how it feels on your cock. Should I wake you up with a blowjob tomorrow? See if I can leave a nice rash inside your thighs?” 

It’s Felix’s turn to lose the ability to think. “You’re never up before me,” he manages. 

“I could be if that’s what you want.” It’s muffled as Sylvain mouths against Felix’s chest. 

“_Yes_,” Felix says, more fervent than he meant to, and Sylvain’s smile curls into the world’s smuggest smirk. 

“That’s what I like to hear.” 

Felix sighs, hugs Sylvain closer, tired in his warm relaxation even though it’s not that late. 

“I love you,” he says, even though it’s still a struggle, because Sylvain likes to have things stated out loud. Sylvain deserves to hear kind words. 

“Love you,” Sylvain says. “Love your voice, love your cock, love the stupid way you try not to smile.” He’s yawning. “Love waking up next to you.” 

Sylvain sprawls out half on top of Felix, face pressed into his neck, legs twined together, like a dozen nights before. It’s as comforting as ever. Felix drifts into sleep surrounded by warmth. 

* * *

Sylvain’s still sleeping when Felix wakes, sprawled out as Felix’s blanket. He indulges for longer than he should, tracing Sylvain’s jawline. 

There are still responsibilities, still terrifying things Felix has to deal with day in and out. But mornings are good now.

They’re also hard, in that dragging himself away from Sylvain is difficult to contemplate, even though he knows they’ll have countless mornings to spend curled up together. He finally disentangles himself, moving slowly, trying not to disturb Sylvain’s slumber. It doesn’t work; he grumbles awake while Felix is still sitting on the side of the bed, preparing himself for the long walk between there and his wardrobe.

“Five more minutes,” Sylvain mumbles, hooking an arm around Felix’s waist. 

Felix bats his hand away. “I have things to do.” They both do. Talking to Dimitri, preparing to ride up to Gautier, all of Felix’s usual duties. 

“Didn’t wake up early enough to suck you off.” Sylvain sounds genuinely regretful. Of course that’s what he thinks of first. 

“You’ll make it up to me later.” Felix gets up, pulls away from Sylvain’s grasp, lingering just long enough to kiss his forehead. “Get up soon.” 

“I know, things to do,” Sylvain grumbles, watching Felix leave.

* * *

“Things” include talking to his advisors, making sure that urgent matters will be addressed while he’s traveling to Gautier, and that long-term matters will end up on his desk. Audience days are every two weeks; he’ll probably miss the next one. Does he appoint a proxy or reschedule it for after his return? What does he do about people who’ve traveled for days to seek his audience? 

Felix hates timetables. He hates paperwork, politics, meetings. He particularly hates delegating. Fraldarius is his duty - everything that goes wrong is his responsibility, whether or not he made the decision in question

Sylvain finds him while he’s making sure a slew of scribes whose names he still mixes up know to take notes on decisions made in his absence and leave the summary on his desk. 

“You’re busy today,” Sylvain says, draping himself over Felix. “What’s the occasion?” 

“Traveling to Gautier.” He glares. What else would it be?” 

“Right,” Sylvain says like he’s stunned almost to silence. “You’re really always serious about what you say, kitten.” 

“Clearly.” And, in a frustrated growl, “Don’t _ call _me that.” 

“Huh? Right. Private only.” Sylvain winks over at Felix’s advisors, who have clustered in silent disapproval. “Hey, could you give us a minute?” 

They’re left alone in the conference room. Sylvain grabs Felix into a hug as soon as the door closes, hands wandering more than is appropriate for a room with an unlocked door. “Yeah, I know you meant it. When are we leaving?”

“Sooner is better.” Sylvain will let loathing eat himself from the inside out if they wait too long, and Felix won’t be able to do anything about it. Best to tear off the bandage all at once. “I’ll be ready by tomorrow.” 

“That soon. You sure about this, kitten? It’ll be harder to get rid of me once this is all official.” Sylvain’s joking; his voice is unguardedly soft. Still. 

Felix squeezes his eyes shut, rests his forehead against Sylvain’s cheek, clenches his hands in Sylvain’s shirt like it could wipe the thought away. “Don’t joke about that. I’m not going to get rid of you.” 

Sylvain sighs against him. “Yeah, kitten, you’re really not. Guess that’s another habit I’m gonna try to break. What else do we need to do today?”

“Talk to Dimitri. He should be back around noon. Tell someone to prepare traveling supplies.” Is there paperwork waiting for him? There’s always paperwork. “Do paperwork. Write to Ingrid.” 

“You sure you want to come with me? Should you leave Fraldarius for so long?” 

“Sylvain,” Felix sighs, “will I always have to repeat myself this much?”

“Always… I like that. Yeah, at least for a while. That a problem?” Sylvain rests a big hand on the small of Felix’s back. 

Felix shudders, tries not to press closer. “Not really. It will irritate me, that’s all.” 

“So does everything, right? It’s cute.” 

Felix glares. “How is that _ cute_?” 

“See? Look, your face is all wrinkly and your voice gets, like, high-pitched and squeaky.” 

“It _ does not _ -” Felix does not _ squeak_. He refuses to accept it. 

“It does.” Sylvain draws the word out teasingly, pinches Felix’s cheek and kisses the tip of his nose. “And you pout.” He strokes Felix’s bottom lip with his thumb. 

Felix bites it.

“Ow! You’re so vicious, Fe.” Sylvain presses their foreheads together, laughing. “See? You’re always annoyed, and I don't mind at all.”

They’re pressed close already. Felix cuddles a little closer, sorting through why _ that _particular announcement is the one that makes him feel choked up and helpless in Sylvain’s arms. 

“Okay,” he says in his smallest voice.

* * *

Dimitri returns from his tour of the nearby towns early in the afternoon. The guards direct him to Felix’s study as instructed, and he rushes in predictably concerned. 

“Calm down, Your Majesty,” Sylvain says before Dimitri can even say anything. He passes over a cup of tea and a plate of snacks. “Have a cheesy biscuit.” 

Felix tried to insist on leading this conversation but he did all the hard work yesterday, and after a few minutes of pleading and a lot of kisses he grudgingly agreed to let Sylvain talk. It’s better this way; Felix still gets too up in his own head when it comes to Dimitri. 

Dimitri sits uncertainty, looking between Sylvain and Felix. “My friends. That was a rather urgent summons. Is something amiss?” 

“See, Felix? We should have left a longer message. His Majesty’s all worried about us now.” 

Felix glares from his seat behind his desk. He refused to cuddle with Sylvain for this. Pity. 

“Anyway,” Sylvain says, grabbing one of the biscuits and crunching it down, “As you know, Felix is the Duke and I’m set to become Margrave in a few years.”

“Sylvain, what is this about?” Dimitri looks even more nervous. 

“The potential union of two lords seems like a matter we should discuss with you before we tell everyone else,” Sylvain says. “And we did tell basically all of Fraldarius while you were gone, so we’re catching up now, Your Majesty.” And, hey, Felix looks downright murderous, like he’s definitely going to spend an hour sulking before letting Sylvain cheer him up. 

“I am afraid I don’t understand,” the king says. 

“Your Majesty, you’re terrible at subtext.” It isn’t even _ subtext_, honestly. How many interpretations are there for _ the potential union of two lords_? Sylvain’s just trying to be considerate and delicate.

“Felix, what is going on here?” 

“_Sylvain _, you said you’d explain.” Felix's scowl deepens. Sylvain’s definitely going to hear about this all afternoon. 

“I’m getting there! Just easing him into it, you know?” He takes another bite of his biscuit. “Anyway, Your Majesty,” Sylvain puts on his best smile, “Felix and I are fucking, and tomorrow we’re leaving on a trip to explain the matter to my parents.” Even that doesn’t feel so dire right now, with Felix’s familiar glare and Dimitri’s dawning comprehension filling the room. 

“In what way is that easing him in?” Felix is completely livid. 

Sylvain shrugs and waits patiently for the king to stop choking on his tea. 

“Yeah, so consider this us letting you know and asking for Your Majesty’s blessing.” Like Felix would have explained that any better; he would have just thrown in half a dozen pointless insults. 

“Congratulations,” the king says. He seems sort of stunned, and he’s staring at Felix so strangely. Felix is avoiding his gaze, not that that’s anything new. “When did this… begin?” 

“I mean, if you count from when Felix pinned me against a wall and told me to stay with him forever, a little less than two days. If you count from when I started wanting to seduce him, uh…” he turns the numbers over in his head. They add up quickly and far too high. “You know what? Let’s go with the first one, Your Majesty. Less than two days.” 

“Two days. Of course,” Dimitri says, like that particular count means something. He smiles over at Felix; Felix glares directly down at his desk. There’s _ definitely _ some story behind this. “I am proud of you, Felix.” 

Felix’s glare is pure poison, and Sylvain’s kind of impressed how Dimitri doesn’t recoil at all. He’s really impressed that Felix doesn’t launch into a speech pointing out all of Dimitri’s personal flaws. 

“Yeah, so you know what that implies, Your Majesty. Potentially a unified northern Faerghus, and definitely no crested heirs.”

“I see. It is quite the departure from tradition.” But Dimitri smiles. “You are aware that a lessened reliance on crests is one of the changes I am hoping to make. Your union is quite convenient in that sense, and I have only joy that my friends have found such comfort in each other.” 

The things Dimitri can say with a straight face, honestly. “So it’s official, right? I can tell my dear old parents that the king supports our union?” Felix is turning brighter red every time someone says ‘union’. Goddess, he’s beautiful, embarrassed scowl and furrowed brow and all. 

Dimitri nods. “Your parents… of course. I imagine that will be a difficult conversation. Yes, you have the support of the crown.”

“Thanks, Your Majesty. Did you want more of these? Another cup of tea? Anything else to say?” Sylvain waves vaguely around the room, trying to hint at the end of the conversation obviously enough that Dimitri catches it but no so obviously that he’s offended. It’s a difficult line to walk.

Dimitri shakes his head. “I believe my presence is causing Felix some discomfort. Shall I see myself out?” 

“Yeah, you know the way. Our house is yours, Your Majesty,” Sylvain says magnanimously. 

He scoops Felix into his arms as soon as Dimitri leaves. “That was a lot of lingering glances, kitten. You have some interesting conversations about me?” 

Felix makes a tiny sound that’s exactly like an offended cat. “Hardly interesting.” 

“Oh? But I’m interested.” He waits out Felix’s silence, and is finally rewarded with the sigh that precedes Felix speaking a sentence he really wishes wasn’t necessary. 

“When I met with Dimitri two days ago,” Felix says haltingly. “He congratulated me on our…” he trials off into a mortified noise and presses his face into Sylvain’s shoulder. 

Sylvain soothingly strokes the back of Felix’s neck, because embarrassed Felix is great but genuinely distressed Felix is a problem. “So that was right before you jumped me.” 

“I did not jump you.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Sylvain says. Felix definitely jumped him, but some battles aren’t worth fighting. “So you’re saying that His Majesty’s the reason we’re lovers.” 

There’s another offended noise, angrier this time. “_I’m _the reason we’re lovers.” 

Sylvain laughs and waits until Felix relaxes by millimeters, cradled comfortable and annoyed in his arms. “Anyway, I thought that went well.” 

“You’re never allowed to do the talking again.” 

“Really, Fe? But I’m so _ charming_. We got the king’s blessing and everything.” 

Felix’s answer is just an unimpressed glare. Somehow it’s like he’s looking down at Sylvain even though his head’s a solid foot lower right now. It’s a nifty trick. 

“So how much apologizing do I have to do?” 

“A considerable amount.” Felix still isn’t laughing. 

“Mmm. Well, I can start on that now,” Sylvain says, bumping their noses together and then arranging Felix comfortably on the couch. He doesn’t even resist being carried this time. Nice. “Any particular form you want your apology to take, kitten?” He kneels down, rests his cheek against Felix’s thigh just to get the point across. 

There’s this way Felix’s eyes go intense when he sees something he wants. They’re always intense, of course - he’s an intense person. But his pupils go all wide when Sylvain kneels down and his mouth twitches into the tiniest smirk. Sylvain’s never going to get tired of it. 

“I think you know. Get to work, Sylvain,” Felix says, taunting and commanding.

* * *

They leave the next day, riding with the rising sun to their right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason this was the hardest chapter so far. I did too many rewrites and I'm still not entirely satisfied, but oh well. Sometimes you just need to stop focusing on a thing's flaws and post it already. 
> 
> Tune in next week when Felix and Sylvain head to Gautier for a difficult conversation, we deal with even more of Sylvain's casual self-loathing, and Felix and Sylvain are good boyfriends who meet each other's emotional needs.
> 
> as always i'm [on social media or whatever.](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid)


	19. Gautier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: tense conversations with one's parents, implied past child abuse, Felix and Sylvain's general emotional issues, and anal sex.

They camp early as they near Castle Gautier. Tomorrow they’ll make the rest of the way easily; no sense rushing and getting in late at night. 

Sylvain’s been anxious and mercurial all day, switching between forced smiles and cold distance and guilty frowns. It’s hard to break him out of a mood, he’s so used to burying them under a mile of insincerity. 

But Sylvain likes - what? Felix runs through a list of things Sylvain finds comforting, good food and complicated books and closeness, sex and hugs and Felix tucked against his chest. He sighs, watching Sylvain’s back as he walks into the woods, searching for a suitable campsite with more focus than necessary for such a simple task.

Even the relatively warm Faerghus summer is a little too cold on Felix’s skin. The ground is hard, their tent is cramped, and there’s no easy way to wash their bedroll while they’re out here. But Sylvain is unsettled and Felix finds himself also wishing for more than the hurried encounters they’ve indulged in. 

He steps in front of Sylvain, leads them further away from the path until they’re out of sight and hearing of the road. 

“Planning something, Fe?” Sylvain says, the perceptive asshole. Felix grunts. 

They build a fire. They eat. Felix watches the light flicker on Sylvain’s skin, warming and shadowing. The crackle of the fire fills their corner of the world as night falls, and Sylvain still sits too quiet and contemplative in the glow. 

So Felix sits in Sylvain’s lap and wraps his legs around Sylvain’s waist. 

“Fe?”

Felix shuts him up with a kiss. 

Sylvain’s eyes are already calmer. It’s so easy to settle him like this, with touch and reassurance. He underlines _ unprompted affection _ in his mental list of Sylvain’s needs, in the section on _ belonging_, next to cuddles and holding hands and calling Felix _ my lover _ in public. 

Felix guides Sylvain’s hands to his belt. “Strip me.” It’s hard to ask for things just for himself; it’s so much easier when it’s for Sylvain too. 

The wild, bright grin that always appears when Felix manages to break one of Sylvain’s moods materializes again. “Yeah. Yeah,” Sylvain says, pulling Felix’s layers off and leaving them in a crumpled heap. 

And, yes, this started out as _ for Sylvain _ but Felix is already squirming impatiently where hands linger on his chest and ass. His dick, unfortunately, twitches just from the unconstrained way Sylvain looks at him, and then from the way Sylvain starts kissing his neck. 

“Knew you couldn’t resist me. What do you want, kitten? A good dicking?” He laughs at Felix’s immediate disgruntled grunt. 

More than anything he wants Sylvain’s smile, Sylvain’s laugh, Sylvain’s devotion - things he already has. But Sylvain’s still-clothed bulk is maddening against Felix’s exposed skin, and his cock is getting painfully hard trapped between their stomachs. “Yes,” he says, trying to match Sylvain’s over-the-top seductive tone. “Anything you want to do to me.” 

“Anything?” The shape of Sylvain’s smirk makes Felix shiver. 

“Within reason,” he amends. 

“Only things you like, kitten,” Sylvain says. “I’ve got a pretty strong interest in making sure you enjoy my cock.” 

Felix scoffs. “Stop that before I change my mind.” He wouldn’t - he is, unfortunately, already very fond of everything Sylvain does to him. 

“Oh? You think you’d do that?” Sylvain trails his hand down Felix’s stomach, pressing it against his cock, laughing at the way Felix squirms and curses and then squirms more when he moves the hand away. One calloused hand settles on Felix’s ass; the other tilts Felix’s head so he’s looking straight at Sylvain. 

“Hey Fe, think you could put those boots back on? For me?” 

“The boots.” Felix repeats. “I offer you anything and you want me to wear my boots.”

“They’re _ so hot_. I’ve wanted to fuck you in those since I first saw them.” 

Felix does put the boots on, grudgingly. Sylvain whistles while he pulls them up his thighs, a difficult task when they’re over skin instead of soft leggings. “That was years ago, Sylvain.” 

“Yeah, so you can imagine just how excited I am, kitten.” He runs his thumbs under the cuffs, stroking at cool leather and warm skin. 

It’s so distracting. Somehow sitting on Sylvain’s lap in only his boots feels more exposed than being completely naked. “Ungh,” Felix says, already lapsing into wordlessness when Sylvain squeezes his thighs hard enough to leave marks. 

“So,” Sylvain says, “Anything.” 

“I already said that,” Felix snaps, curled up in Sylvain’s lap in his stupid boots, already impatient. Sylvain starts working him open without another word, teasing casually around Felix’s rim and dipping in and out. Felix presses his face into Sylvain’s shoulders and focuses on stifling his whimpers. 

Before long Sylvain pulls his own clothes off, spreads out the bedroll, and pins Felix facedown, arranging him with his ass in the air and a hand pressing down between his shoulder blades. 

“Want to know what I’m going to do to you?” 

Felix is silent. He absolutely does not whine, but his uncontrollable shudder gives him away. 

“Oh, kitten. I’m going to keep you here and make you take me nice and slow.” Sylvain’s hands move to Felix’s hips, pressing hard enough that Felix can only strain helplessly. 

There’s the bluntness of Sylvain’s cock at Felix’s entrance and he closes his eyes, breathes deep, gasps when it starts pressing inside. 

The first time was overwhelming and thrilling, with Felix in control. This is, technically, only the second time Felix has taken Sylvain - or anyone - like this. Somehow it’s more overwhelming, because Felix is facedown on a forest floor and has never, in his entire life, allowed himself to be so vulnerable. As a rule Felix does not give up control. But Sylvain holds him in place, moves torturously slow, and the world fragments around the edges. 

It doesn’t make sense for the world to hold so much sensation, for his body to contain so many nerve endings that can all be set afire in the same moment. Felix buries his face in the bedroll and blocks out the unrecognizable sounds made by his own throat, rocks desperately against Sylvain’s cock, gasps until his brain starts to break down sensations into separate feelings again - cold air, hard earth, Sylvain’s hands and Sylvain’s voice and Sylvain’s cock, tolerable pleasure instead of a universe of need. 

“Okay,” Felix says. He shifts experimentally, finds he’s still pinned in place. “Hurry up.” 

“That must be some record for going from totally incoherent to bossy,” Sylvain says far too conversationally. 

At least he starts to move. But true to his word Felix stays pinned in place and takes Sylvain’s agonizingly slow thrusts, cock dragging along like Sylvain has some sixth sense for the exact placement of Felix’s prostate and how best to turn him into a helpless, drooling mess. 

It’s an embarrassingly short time before Felix is fighting in earnest, pressing up against Sylvain’s immovable hands, whimpering with every slow shift. 

“Hey kitten,” the fucking bastard sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “Say please and I’ll fuck you however you want.” 

For a moment Felix considers the merits of surrender. It’s just one word, barely even begging. “Fuck you,” he growls instead, with a lot of vitriol considering his current position. 

“What a shame,” Sylvain purrs, sounding not the slightest bit sorry. “Guess you’re taking me like this, nice and slow.” 

Another perfect thrust; Felix covers his mouth to contain his noises. Sylvain drags Felix’s hand away. 

“No one’s here but us. You can let me hear those pretty sounds.” 

Another thrust, and another, until Felix surrenders anyway, lets himself whimper and drool into the bedroll and stops fighting against Sylvain’s hands, taking what’s given, losing himself into numbing pleasure.

He misses the exact moment of Sylvain’s orgasm. But then he’s gently rolled over, stroked until he comes with a tiny cry, held against Sylvain’s chest. 

“You sort of went away for a while, kitten. Did you like that?” 

Felix shifts experimentally. The world feels quiet and unreal, shrunken to an island of light and safety centered around Sylvain. 

“I liked it,” he admits into Sylvain’s shoulder. 

Sylvain chuckles. “Yeah. It’s nice, huh? Getting out of your own head.” 

It is, at that - giving up, letting himself be senseless and voiceless and arranged by someone else. It should be terrifying, but it’s just Sylvain, only Sylvain. 

Sylvain tucks Felix’s head firmly under his chin, works a gentle hand through Felix’s tangled hair. 

“Next time we’re doing that in an actual bed,” Felix mumbles as awareness starts to blur into sleep. His knees are probably bruised. 

“So there’ll be a next time. Nice,” Sylvain says. His laughter against Felix’s forehead soothes. “Sleep well, kitten.” 

* * *

Felix never spent much time in Gautier. It was always Sylvain visiting Fraldarius, dropped off by people other than his parents or occasionally by his father alone. Sometimes they all went to Fhirdiad, occasionally Galatea. Never Gautier. 

As a child Felix didn’t give it much thought. The sky was blue and grey, the ocean was vast and changeable, the snow fell deep and cold. And two or three times a year Sylvain appeared from the north, reliable as the seasons. 

It was, for Felix, a reason for celebration. He’d never had the knack of making friends, not like Glenn did. He was too shy and too eager, scared of new people and desperate to impress them. 

Sylvain was different - bigger and older, strong and confident. Three years is nothing after twenty years and a war spent together. It's everything to a four year old who started talking late and has already been handed a blunt sword and too many expectations. Sylvain seemed so old and interesting, but he let Felix tag along to climb trees and run through the fields. Invited him, even, told Felix all about the ride down from Gautier while they snuck into one of the orchards to pick apples, beamed at Felix’s excitement. He didn’t even laugh when Felix tripped and scraped his knee, just waited while Felix sniffled and then helped him back up. 

From then on Felix really did run to Sylvain with every little problem, until they were thirteen and sixteen and Felix decided he’d never cry again. 

At the time, as a child who struggled to walk through deep snow, he’d never thought to ask who Sylvain cried to. Goddess knows Felix never saw him cry, not even later, when one summer he appeared with a still-healing broken arm he wouldn’t talk about and Felix began to suspect that something was very wrong in Gautier. 

The castle walls draw near far too soon. Felix hates them; has always hated the looming statues and the coldness they exude, the family they represent, the way Sylvain grew colder and more masked every time Felix saw him. 

“Sylvain,” he says, and has no idea what Sylvain sees in his eyes when he turns in his saddle to look at Felix, “I won’t let you face them alone again.” 

Sylvain stares back; his mask cracks open into golden warmth and crimson hate. “You can’t always come here with me.” 

“I’m the Duke,” Felix says wryly, with the sort of arrogance he’s always thought of as other nobles’ domain. “I can do whatever I please.” 

“And you’re using all that power to help me talk to my parents,” Sylvain says. His mask flickers, the cold of Gautier solidifying and falling away. “I’m really never getting rid of you.” 

“You aren’t,” Felix says, even as he’s able to. 

And then there’s just Sylvain, soft and pained as they’re approaching the gates. “Last chance to run, Felix.” 

“I won’t.” They pass through, guards bowing low to the heir. Felix raises his voice, picking one of them at random. “Send a message that Duke Fraldarius requires a meeting with Margrave and Margravine Gautier. And have someone stable our horses.” 

The guard pales and bows lower. “Of course, Your Grace.” 

“Tell them to send their response to the heir’s quarters. I’ll await it there.” He strides off through the castle entrance, possessed by calm fury he’d thought lived only on the battlefield. Sylvain follows half a step behind, striding through the entrance hall. It’s filled with weapons and armor with the breaks mended and dents hammered out, a record of hundreds of years of death. Worse than Fraldarius or Fhirdiad; every empty breastplate belongs to a Glenn, a Rodrigue, sacrificed over and over by Gautier’s watchtower and buried in the ice, weapons pinned to the stones of the castle, likenesses anchored forever to the earth, bragged about to visitors and ignored as scenery by everyone else. 

The list of names rips through Felix’s heart; the gazes of the distant statues bore through his back.

“Do you plan to redecorate when you inherit?” 

Sylvain shrugs. “We’ll see. I used to think their eyes followed me,” he says, nodding at the statues. 

Felix pauses as he leaves the hall. He’s spent most of his time in Gautier in border skirmishes and monster hunts; it’s been years since he was in Sylvain’s rooms. “Lead the way,” Felix says, and follows Sylvain in. 

* * *

Safe in Sylvain’s room, Felix settles on a sofa that’s a little too stiff to be comfortable. A messenger arrives sooner than he expects, announcing that Lady Gautier would be delighted if they’d join her for tea. 

Sylvain opens his mouth like he’s going to accept, but Felix refuses for both of them. 

“Send my regrets, but I am only interested in meeting with the Lord and Lady together.” He doesn’t intend to start off this visit by compromising. 

Sylvain paces. “Pissing them off already, huh?” 

“They’ll be upset no matter the details.” The Gautiers have always been concerned about marrying Sylvain to a lady and securing a line of crested heirs. The question, really, is whether they’re going to stop at disapproval or move onto open threats.

Sylvain’s laugh is a pretense of broken glass. “Yeah, sure will. ‘Hey mom and dad, I’m living in Fraldarius now, I’m never having kids, call me when I inherit’. Great.” 

He’s a simple book to read right now. Angry, afraid, pacing and manic, grinning like it’s the only thing between him and dark water. 

“Better than waiting until they showed up with an army and demanded your return,” Felix spits. 

But Sylvain doesn’t need an argument. Sylvain needs a distraction, because he’s spent his whole life avoiding this sort of battle, grinning and agreeing and running when things are too difficult. Sylvain’s never known how to hold onto anything, not even to himself. 

“What will you do when you inherit?” 

“Tear down those fucking statues.” Sylvain doesn’t usually go for open vitriol. Is that a good sign or a bad one? “Never have heirs. Shatter the Lance of fucking Ruin.” He’s glaring like he almost never does. 

“That’s a good plan,” Felix says. He means it. 

“You think so? You’re going to stand by me while I rip apart everything Gautier stands for?” 

Everything Gautier stands for - an image Felix can’t separate from broken-armed ten-year-old Sylvain. It’s a watchtower that, as far as Felix cares, fills one purpose with maximum efficiency and ruins everything else, turns Sylvain into a shell of himself, burns through the kingdom’s soldiers and food at the best of times. A strange sort of calm descends on him. “Yes.” 

Sylvain settles back into smiling normalcy, so quick it can’t be healthy. He slumps onto the uncomfortable couch next to Felix. 

“Fuck. Do you ever think it would’ve been easier if we died back in Enbarr?” 

“Every day,” Felix says, sad and unsurprised. 

“Well, fuck,” Sylvain says again, and curls up until he fits in Felix’s arms. He’s heavy and warm. His hair tickles Felix’s chin. 

“Hey, Fe, there’s something else I’m going to do after I inherit. Know what it is?” 

“Fuck me in the parlor?” he guesses, dry and resigned to a life of bad dick jokes. 

Sylvain’s laugh is loud and startled. He looks up at Felix with the good smile, warm and true. “I mean, yeah, I’ll fuck you in every room we have.” The smile fades again; terrifying sincerity. “Not what I was thinking about, though.” He sprawls out across Felix’s lap and closes his eyes. “Don’t you think it’s time someone made peace with Sreng?” 

It’s not a political situation Felix has put much thought into. “What do you mean?” 

“So, while we’re pissing off my parents, I might as well give up all the Gautier secrets. I mean, you’re practically a Gautier now anyway. Unless I’m practically a Fraldarius?” Sylvain’s words are rushed with heavy momentum, too insistently desperate for Felix to interrupt. 

“It’s all bullshit, Fe. This whole thing started over a dispute over half a mile of territory and we’ve been killing each other ever since, you know? Sure, there are raids and border incursions, but do you know how many opportunities for peace talks we’ve ignored? Dozens. I don’t know, a hundred. It’s obvious to anyone who takes a look at our records, but -” his laugh is deep and wild. “It’s all Gautiers up here, and Gautiers stick together.” 

Everything’s numb; nothing processes correctly. An entrance hall full of war trophies for no purpose. “Why?” Felix asks. 

“The usual.” Sylvain shrugs carelessly like he’s talking about what he’ll have for dinner. “It pays to be needed. You get all the money and power you want when everyone thinks you’re fighting a battle for the sake of the whole country. We should give them back their land; give them the whole fucking north. What do we need it for?” 

“Okay,” Felix whispers because what else? It makes a certain amount of sense; so obsessed with their crests and their keeps, always reminding the other houses that Gautier is the only one that’s never at peace, parleying blood into power. “Okay.” 

“Yeah, so now you know,” Sylvain says, grinning again. “And I’ve known for years. Could have told you at any time but nope, we’ve been running around slaughtering like it didn’t matter. Guess it’s my fault you’ve got all that blood on your hands.” 

It’s horrifying, disgusting. But Felix has an ocean of blood on his hands; what difference does it make that he knows the origin of a few drops? Everyone he cares about put some of it there - he’s fought plenty of battles that could probably have been avoided, killed people who might have surrendered, who didn’t have much choice in their actions and allegiance. One more pool of blood won’t drown him when the rest has already failed. “You told me now.” 

“I guess I’ve betrayed my house on top of everything else. You picked a real charmer, Fe. What’s going to stop me from betraying you worse than I already have?” 

And this - this is familiar. This is what Sylvain does, isn’t it? What Sylvain and Felix both do, panic and stab and run away. Not this time; _ not this time_. Sylvain understands words, and Felix is too numb to provide them, so he leans down and presses their mouths together, kisses desperate and artless until Sylvain’s breathless and twisting his hands through Felix’s hair, holds him until he settles back into unmasked melancholy. 

“You’re staying right here,” Felix says as soon as he can. “You’re mine.” 

Sylvain blinks up like he’s reading something written and revealed in Felix’s words. Felix can’t tell what it is. 

“Yeah. All yours, kitten,” Sylvain says, and Felix doesn’t try to hide how he shudders at the name. “Only yours. I’ll never betray you.” He breathes until he’s staring up at Felix with the soft smile of a man who’s been through too much and thinks, just maybe, he’s figured out where he belongs. Felix strokes his hair. 

Sylvain surges abruptly up and drags Felix down, trapping him between the back of the sofa and Sylvain’s warm body. “Come here,” Sylvain says like Felix has any choice in the matter. 

“I love you,” Felix says, because he needs to say it as much as Sylvain needs to hear it, because it’s the best lifeline he has against knowledge worming into his mind. Sreng wasn’t Sylvain’s choice; it was decisions made years ago, generations ago, passed on and on until some Gautier looked up for long enough to pick a different path. But he can feel his chest tightening even before it happens, a response to too much pain and too little control. 

Sylvain can feel it too somehow, kisses Felix’s forehead and buries Felix safe against his chest, where Felix can absorb his slow breaths. 

“Who’s going to do the talking? With my parents?” Sylvain asks a long time later, once Felix’s breathing is smooth and even again. 

There’s only one answer to that. Sylvain would freeze into smiling compliance or poison attacks. 

“I am,” Felix says with more certainty than he feels, too certain for so soon after he shook himself apart in Sylvain’s arms. “Don’t argue.” 

Sylvain sighs. “You’re taking such good care of me, kitten. You need to let me return the favor before long.” 

“It’s not a favor,” Felix says. Sylvain’s arms are warm around Felix; his fingers stroking against Felix’s scalp are an assurance of safety, a promise. It’s tempting to fall asleep here, but Sylvain’s awake and still distressed, although less than before. 

“I know. Still.” Sylvain nuzzles closer, squeezing the last distance from between them. “I’m not leaving you. And you’re exhausted, right? I sort of dumped that all on you. Come on, rest. Get some sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.” 

Felix cranes his neck to get a good look at Sylvain’s expression. It’s thoughtful and sincere. He rests his head against Sylvain’s chest, drifts off into warmth despite himself - 

-wakes up while the evening sun is going soft and gold and Sylvain’s still stroking his hair. Sylvain’s also muttering words into it, musingly, _ love _ and _ dove_, _ home _ and _ roam_, _ smitten _ and _ kitten_. Poetry in fragments. 

“You’re still doing that?” Felix asks, half asleep and muffled by Sylvain’s chest. 

“Mmm. I wrote you a whole bunch of poems while I was away.”

Felix flushes. “Really?” 

“I take all of my promises to you seriously, kitten. You demanded poems, and I'll write you as many as you want.” 

“Tell me they aren’t all sonnets.” 

Sylvain’s chuckle is warm and relieved. “This one’s going to be a villanelle. Want a preview?” 

Poems. It’s ridiculous. “Save them for when we’re riding home.” 

“Riding home. I like that. The wind at our back, the sun shining on your hair, me serenading you with poetry. You’re not getting out of it this time, kitten.” 

He doesn’t even want to get out of it. He’ll listen to every one of Sylvain’s rhymes and jokes and overly-long metaphors. “Good,” he says, and tilts his head for a kiss. 

And there’s a knock at the door. 

* * *

The messenger says they’re to join Lord and Lady Gautier for dinner at seventh bell, about an hour from now. Sylvain’s surprised that both his parents are home. 

He stares critically at his reflection. Between the beard, the overgrown hair, and the general aura of having traveled for several days without bothering to bathe he won’t meet his parents' expectations. He could fix at least two of those problems, if he wanted. 

Sylvain picks up the razor consideringly; it’s habit to bow to his parent’s whims, but would any changes to his appearance even matter?

“What are you doing?” Felix asks from where he’s rummaging around in his bag for a better shirt, holding it up and glaring at the wrinkles. 

“Thought I might shave. The parents disapprove of mess.” 

“Ugh.” Felix stalks over and rubs at Sylvain’s beard. “It suits you.” 

“You think? What about the hair?” 

Felix tilts his head consideringly. “It looks less polished when it’s growing out. I like that.” 

Sylvain stares at the mirror, tries to see what Felix must - messy growing-out hair and a rough beard, framing the elegant lines of his face, turning him into something warm and imperfect instead of a flat portrait. He puts down the razor. His parents will have to cope. 

* * *

Dinner’s in the formal dining room, even though it’s just for four. Gautiers believe in intimidation, and the grandness is even more distinct in comparison to Felix and Sylvain’s travel-rumpled finery. 

He stops before they enter and squeezes Felix’s hand, expecting grim terror when he looks into Felix’s eyes. Instead there’s cold anger and bright determination. 

“Felix-” He’s ignored. 

“Sylvain. You’re with me forever, right?” 

“Forever. Maybe I should have brought a ring.” Sylvain brushes a loose strand of hair away from Felix’s smirk. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says again, “it’s going to be okay.” 

It sounds odd on Felix’s tongue, but he’s so _ earnest_. Sylvain chuckles broken and kisses him, the barest brush of their lips. “Yeah. You’re doing most of the talking, and I’m your alluring moral support.” 

No more hesitating. They enter, not hand-in-hand but side-by-side. 

“Hey,” Sylvain says. The lord and lady wait at the head of a vast table in a vaster room illuminated by a lit chandelier reflecting off a shining marble floor. It’s hell to keep that floor clean, he knows from experience. 

“Margrave and Margravine Gautier.” Felix bows to the centimeter as low as proper for acknowledging a lower-ranked noble host. “My thanks for meeting on such short notice.” 

“Duke Fraldarius.” Sylvain’s mother says, gracious as always over her core of disdain. They never liked Felix; he was a loud, messy child that became a stubborn, angry adult, and Gautiers hate things that aren’t easily kept clean and cowed and filed away into a useful box. “How thoughtful for you to schedule such a meeting.” 

“Yes, we haven’t heard much from Fraldarius lately. This is sorely overdue,” Sylvain’s father says, all broad smile and gleaming eyes over his casual expectation of power. Sometimes Sylvain thinks he sees his dad when he looks in the mirror; he’s broken more than one because of that. They're of a height now, Sylvain’s nearly as broad in the shoulders, his hair’s as bright. The beard is different - the Lord Gautier wouldn’t be seen dead wearing something so scruffy. 

Beside him Felix manages a perfect, vicious smile, the sort he wears when he’s contemplating whether someone is worth stabbing. Sylvain feels his own smile widen into something wide and predatory. 

His parents always underestimated Felix, even more than they underestimated Sylvain, filed them away as nothing more than weapons. 

“You understand that my father’s untimely death left a few problems to clean up before I could devote time to courtly visits,” Felix says. 

Sylvain sits down a few seats away from the head of the table, far enough that it’s a studied insult. Felix sits beside him, between Sylvain and the Gautiers. 

Dinner’s served. It’s good, by Faerghus standards. The conversation stays on political matters, soldiers and crops and rebuilding, the Gautiers probing with careful questions and Felix answering curt and polite. Sylvain stays silent, eats, places a steadying hand on Felix’s thigh. 

No one’s even mentioned his presence. Felix might be trying to force his parents to bring it up first, make them admit they don’t know what their own son’s been doing. When did he get so clever at this sort of thing? 

Being an observer in his own household is almost fun. Sylvain is never _ quiet_, never gets to just watch other people navigate conversations. Right now he can track how Felix wears his careful, impassive mask, how his hand twitches by the hilt of his sword whenever a question becomes particularly full of judgement. Felix doesn’t bite; doesn’t rip the Gautiers apart; doesn’t even make his own veiled insults. He’s always been terrible at controlling his temper, but he’s doing it now, for Sylvain. 

Felix was right. Sylvain could not have done this, would have fallen back into sharp-edged submission at the first sign of resistance. He eats his meal, and keeps his hand on Felix’s thigh, and watches. 

“Of course,” Sylvain’s mother says - the discussion has turned back to military support, and Sylvain’s breath hitches every time Sreng is referenced even obliquely - “we wouldn't need so much help holding the border if our own son wasn’t in Fraldarius.” 

Sylvain grins at her. 

“I’m afraid sending Fraldarius soldiers to the border is out of the question,” Felix says. “There are too many monsters in our woods and too many groups of empire holdouts to spare them.” 

“No soldiers are necessary,” the Lord Gautier says. “Our son is enough to hold the border alone.” Sharp eyes settle on Sylvain’s, a battle of northern ice. He settles back, and waits, and trusts. 

“I believe I just covered the difficulties Fraldarius faced after my father’s death. Did Gautier send us any aid? No? Your heir gracefully offered his services while we rebuild. Surely you wouldn’t leave us resourceless after such a tumultuous time.” 

Felix makes Sylvain sound so selfless, like he didn’t show up to seduce Felix. Every exchange gets closer to an ultimatum, loses layers of obfuscation, approaches an open power struggle. He’s leaving with Felix no matter what happens, but he’d prefer to leave with Gautier resigned to letting go of him. 

“And yet you refuse to aid Gautier in turn.” The Margrave scowls over his cup of wine.

“I refuse to send soldiers to your borders when they’re needed at home. I already offered to aid rebuilding in southern Gautier; Fraldarius has no shortage of the materials you’ll need.”

There’s silence, long and terse. Felix has never been one for words, but it’s not so surprising he’s good at this sort of thing. It’s just another battlefield, isn’t it, and Felix was always a genius at tactics. Don't show weakness, make your enemy believe they’re outnumbered and outmaneuvered, mind your footwork and you’ve already won. 

“So, yes,” Felix continues. “I see nothing unreasonable about our terms so far. We are allies, are we not? Does house Gautier wish to start a new Duke’s rule on such uncharitable footing?”

Sylvain can’t hold in his sigh - an ultimatum, more or less. The Gautiers can’t risk alienating Fraldarius. Or they could, but it might start a civil war. 

Felix glances over at him, lingers like he’s asking permission. Sylvain nods. 

“Aside from our practical needs, I have grown attached to Sylvain’s presence in Fraldarius. I came here for more than a discussion of resources, and had you inquired after his health you’d already know the details.” He waits, glaring up at Sylvain’s parents. 

“What details would those be?” Sylvain’s father drops his pretended smile, glares at Felix like he was born specifically to be irritating. 

There’s the thinnest possible smile on Felix’s lips. “Your heir and I recently entered a relationship. We intend to formalize it. Just imagine, a permanent bond between our great houses.” 

Probably only Sylvain can hear the scorn dripping from Felix’s voice on the last few words. He just about swoons, and can’t resist squeezing Felix’s thigh. 

“We have your blessing, of course?” It’s casual and so arrogant, a challenge to everything and anything. 

Lord Gautier looms up, standing at the end of the table. Sylvain feels Felix shudder, sees him grasp for a sword and then let go, placing his hands carefully on the table and reaching for the platter of preserved fruit. He doesn’t even like those things. 

“Did you intend to voice an objection?” Felix’s voice shakes, just a little, so minutely that Sylvain can barely hear it. He’s looking down at the fruit he just picked up, but only Sylvain knows that the lack of eye contact is a personal quirk rather than the height of careless dismissal. He has no idea, really, what Felix is doing on purpose and what’s happy accident, what’s artifice and what comes naturally. He’s so proud, either way. _ Sylvain _ certainly couldn’t face down Margrave Gautier with such unconcern. 

“You think an arrogant lordling can waltz North and take our own heir? Threaten us in our own home?” 

“Which threat would that be? I recall offering aid in reconstruction and a closer alliance.” Felix’s eyes are about as hard as Sylvain’s ever seen them, which is saying something. He doesn’t move, doesn’t draw steel, doesn’t yell. It’s kind of terrifying. 

“The threat to take our son. We have -” 

“Plans? To marry him to a woman of status? So I’ve heard.” Felix’s smirk is so beautiful. “May I be the first to congratulate you on securing a match with a Duke instead.” Yeah. So beautiful, and Sylvain should definitely commission some rings. 

His mother frowns delicately; his father growls. “And give up on future heirs? Gautier requires a crested lord. Unless you’re planning to father children on some village girls? It would be fitting, for a pair of men who would so abandon their obligations.” 

Of course _ that’s _ the taunt that shifts Felix to looking straightforwardly murderous. Sylvain pats his thigh comfortingly; he’s taken them most of the way, and Sylvain feels capable of contributing. 

“Hey, how do you know I haven’t already? You never seemed to mind the thought of a few bastards before.” He stretches out himself, stands up, meeting his father’s gaze across the table. Sylvain’s blood pounds in his ears. “And yeah, the whole _ legitimate heirs _thing… that was never going to happen anyway.” His shrug feels like a lunge, like a stab, like a bolt of lighting breaking through an ocean of stone and pressure. “So what are you going to do? Disinherit me? Cut the line of crested Gautiers short a few years early?” 

“Don’t test me. We can have other heirs,” Sylvain’s father hisses, and for perhaps the first time in his life it isn’t a terrifying experience. 

“Oh, _ come on_,” Sylvain says, laughs like rusted nails and spite spilling free. “You barely had me. You’re old.” And he is; how did Sylvain not notice before? Strength fading, iron presence mostly a memory, blood-red hair all that’s left from the man Sylvain remembers from his childhood. They’d had high hopes for Miklan, and then for Sylvain. It’s probably too late for another chance. 

Felix shoots him a look; taps his hand against Sylvain’s knee, _ don’t go too far_. Sylvain quiets but doesn’t sit down. In his estimation this is just about over. 

“I did prepare a letter regarding my intentions. Signed by His Majesty, of course, with copies filed in Fhirdiad and Fraldarius.” Felix drops a richly-sealed scroll on the table. Must have gotten that done right before they left. “I’ll leave you to look over it.” He stands slowly, performs another of those so-perfect-it’s-almost-insulting bows, grabs Sylvain’s hand on the way out. 

Sylvain resists the urge to flip his parents off. They’re being the bigger people here, and Sylvain is enjoying this rare opportunity to occupy the moral high ground. He grins as broad as he can and mouths _ see you _ over his shoulder, which is probably worse anyway. 

They walk hand-in-hand back to Sylvain’s quarters. He can’t say he wants to spend a night here, but they need a minute to regroup. Sylvain’s jittery, manic in anger and feral excitement, squeezing Felix’s hand with every step and pinning him against the wall as soon as they’re safe in privacy. He shoves his tongue in Felix’s mouth, not paying much attention to technique, just wanting. 

Felix tries to say something and Sylvain kisses harder, desperate, devouring and worshipful, consumed by the anger of Felix’s eyes and the perfection of every word Felix said in his defense. It’s probably whole minutes before he pulls away enough for both of them to get an entire breath. Felix looks decidedly flustered, red and panting, pretty mouth smeared with Sylvain’s spit. 

“You’re perfect, Felix. Where’d you learn that?” 

Felix’s frown is evident in the crease of his brow. “I’ve sat in on plenty of tense conversations, and studied ever since the war ended. But I don’t know if that went well.” His voice is unsteady.

“You were perfect,” Sylvain repeats, and will keep repeating until Felix believes it. “All sharp and clever. Did you see the looks on their faces? I mean,” Felix had been so concerned with doing things properly, “you did everything right. Gave them a chance to be gracious and everything. But I'll never forget how you snapped at my dad. Thought you were gonna duel him for a second there.” 

He feels Felix’s shaky laugh. “I still could.” 

“No. It’s not worth it.” He kisses Felix’s forehead. “Remember the bit where you basically proposed? You should do it again.” 

Felix scoffs. “Sylvain. That’s not the first time I’ve basically proposed.” 

And it isn’t. Felix has been pretty clear about wanting forever. Sylvain _ really _should get around to buying rings. 

“Hey kitten, I’m never leaving you.” 

Felix’s breath quickens. He nods. 

“And you’re never leaving me, right?” 

Felix seems too overwhelmed to actually, like, respond. 

“Let’s get married. Throw a big wedding and everything.” 

Felix scowls. “We’re not wasting resources on a wedding until the food situation is more stable.” 

Right, right, practicalities. “It can be a long engagement. Just promise me, okay? Make it formal?” 

“You have terrible timing,” Felix says, slumping forward. Sure, Gautier’s a shitty place for this, but Sylvain can’t think of anything more romantic than the way Felix just faced down his parents. “Fine,” Felix finally says. “If you’re going to bother me about it.” 

He laughs and laughs, crushes Felix against his chest, leans down to kiss his _ fiance_. “I’m going to bother you about everything, forever,” Sylvain whispers. “And I’m going to take such good care of you. You’re really good at taking care of me, kitten.” Felix might not realize. Felix probably still thinks of himself as all sharp edges, unfit for holding anyone’s heart, forged for battle. Sylvain can change that, one trickle of truth at a time. 

And, right now, Felix probably needs some of that. He’s still shaky and slumped against Sylvain, filled with adrenaline. He coaxes Felix back to the sofa, makes himself into the most comfortable bed he can and drags Felix down on top, delights in the feeling of Felix slowly relaxing. 

“You okay, Felix?” 

“I will be.” 

Sylvain drags a hand down Felix’s back, just touching. “What’s comforting for you?” Sparring, probably. Being held, clearly. He can’t think of anything else. 

Felix shrugs. “Sparring.” 

Of course. “What else?” 

There’s this really long pause before Felix says, grudgingly and like he already regrets it, “You.” 

Sylvain hugs him closer, shifts until Felix is trapped between his chest and the back of the sofa again, tilts Felix’s head up to look at the brightness of his blush. He kisses Felix for good measure. 

“Well, you’ve got that, kitten.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the most technically challenging thing I've written in terms of how much I was trying to accomplish in a relatively short space. Hopefully it worked! Hopefully it feels like Felix and Sylvain are solidly in a place of recover and mutual trust. I've spent all week looking at this and I can no longer tell.
> 
> As you can see, this thing is almost over. There's a wrap-up chapter that ties up a couple more things, and then an epilogue. I'm very excited about the epilogue. 
> 
> Villanelles are my favorite form of poetry! I've written several but am, so far, too self-conscious to include any.
> 
> Thanks for reading, every comment increases my power, and I spend a lot of time complaining about Sylvain @thecaryatid.


	20. Tomorrow

Sylvain does recite poems to Felix all the way back to Fraldarius, off and on, giddy with the enormity of belonging. 

Felix complains. It wouldn’t be Felix if he couldn’t find something to be annoyed about, and Sylvain files all of his weak protests away next to Felix’s blushes and the way he goes wide-eyed and speechless at particularly honest strings of words. They’re all things to be cherished, stored and kept and examined over and over, along with Felix’s scowls and half-hearted insults and grudging proclamations of love. 

His Majesty is already gone back to Fhirdiad when they return. They had, perhaps, not been the best hosts, but presumably they’ll be forgiven. 

There’s a pile of paperwork waiting for Felix, of course, but nothing calamitous has happened. Their stay in Gautier was so brief they didn’t even miss an audience day. Felix still stresses over it; delegating does not come naturally to him, so Sylvain sends him off to hear audiences alone and then sits down with the remainder of the paperwork himself. 

He doesn’t complete anything, just sorts it into neat little piles with helpful notes like “probably bullshit”, “contradictory bullshit”, “ask your advisors”, and “this one might need diplomacy”. 

Felix stares when he gets back. “Sylvain?” He finally says, not sounding at all grateful. 

“Am I supposed to avoid doing _ anything _useful while I’m here? Come on, Fe, I need to keep some of my skills sharp.” The notes were, to be fair, overly flippant and designed specifically to exasperate Felix. They’re also good information. Felix is overworked, and Sylvain needs to get accustomed to this sort of thing if he stands a hope of making peace with Sreng. 

“Besides, the more I take off your hands the more time you have to pay attention to me,” Sylvain says. It’s not a lie. More time with Felix is always going to be one of Sylvain’s goals. 

It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, sorting and summarizing Felix’s paperwork, keeping abreast of politics in Fodlan, ordering himself a steady supply of increasingly esoteric books. Wandering the town, getting acquainted with all the locals, taking tea with Mercedes. And, of course, spending every spare hour with Felix, riling him up and reassuring him by turns. 

After two weeks it feels they’ve been doing it forever, and like an eternity of the exact same pattern would be, actually, really nice. 

* * *

The first interruption comes when Ingrid flies in and announces her presence by breaking down the study door. 

“I _ cannot _ believe you finally stopped dancing around each other and I had to hear about it in a letter from the king!” She yells, so that’s about standard for angry Ingrid. And then she pauses, angry entrance complete and presumably noticing that Sylvain’s straddling Felix’s lap with the very specific intention of getting his brains fucked out. At least neither of them are naked yet. Not that Sylvain really cares, but that would definitely elevate Felix’s reaction from _ slightly murderous _ to _ deeply spiteful_. 

“Ingrid,” is all Felix says.

“Did you break the door?” Sylvain asks while Felix and Ingrid glare at each other. 

She closes it. It’s still on its hinges, but the deadbolt swings back into a chunk that’s been torn out of the wall. 

“Oh dear,” she says, suddenly looking mortified. “I’ll, uh, come back in the morning.” 

“Oh, it’s fine,” Sylvain says, maybe a little meanly. “I certainly don’t care if half the castle walks in on us.” 

Felix hisses almost like an angry cat. It’s cute. He likes Felix in all of his moods, but there’s something about the way Felix gets when he’s a little pissed off that _ really _does it for Sylvain. 

“I thought you wrote to her,” Sylvain says after Ingrid leaves, while he’s being manhandled over to the private sitting room which has the advantage of an intact door. 

Felix glares like that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard and not an extremely reasonable question regarding his communication with their mutual best friend. 

“I do. I don’t know, it’s been busy. I’ve lost track recently,” Felix says without pausing from efficiently getting rid of Sylvain’s clothes. “Didn’t _ you _write to her?” 

Which, fair. And Sylvain has actually been keeping up with his correspondence - he just didn’t mention the domestic-bliss-with-Felix thing. In retrospect, his half-baked plan to surprise her next time they met in person had some serious weaknesses. “I thought we could tell her in person.” 

“So this is entirely your fault,” Felix says, frowning like Sylvain is the most irresponsible man on the surface of Fodlan. 

“You can tell yourself that if that makes you feel better about not writing her,” Sylvain says, prepared to die here and now. 

Felix scoffs and leaves a particularly deep bite on Sylvain’s neck, and then yanks his head back to leave another. Sylvain moans. 

“Go clear off the desk, Sylvain.” 

He whimpers a little, steals another eager kiss from Felix and then does as he’s told. There’s not a lot on this one, just a few books, a chess board, and some materials for weapon maintenance. It doesn’t really matter where they go. But even naked, eager, and under Felix’s impatient gaze he piles them semi-neatly on a chair. Then he bends over the desk even though Felix hasn’t ordered anything yet, spreading his legs a little to give Felix a better view.

Felix laughs, probably against his better judgement, and Sylvain _ does _pride himself on being the subject of Felix’s amusement. 

Firm hands press him closer to the desk. Sylvain follows their lead, probably too relaxed all things considered. Felix could honestly stand to be a little rougher, but he still seems terrified at the thought of hurting Sylvain. 

“You should get some cuffs,” Sylvain says, grabbing comfortably at the edge of the desk.

“Oh?”

“Nice comfortable ones. Don’t you want to tie me down and watch me squirm?” He’d like it. He’d love to put himself at Felix’s mercy like that. 

“We should do that, shouldn’t we,” Felix says, reaching over to pin down Sylvain’s wrists experimentally. He’s not tall enough to keep them pinned comfortably for long. 

“Yeah. Have them made in your favorite color, maybe get a collar to match.” He thinks a little harder; yeah, definitely get one of those. And also rings; they still haven’t bought rings. 

Felix makes a noise like he’s not sure how to feel about that one. He will, Sylvain is quite sure, come around. Felix likes making Sylvain helpless far too much. 

“Hmm,” Felix says, already sounding interested. But he probably abandons his line of thought to finger open Sylvain, more experimentally than anything - Sylvain has picked up the habit of opening himself up when he really wants Felix to fuck him - and then shove his lubed-up dick in with basically no warning. Sylvain knocks his forehead against the desk. 

“Sorry. Too abrupt?” 

Sylvain laughs. Maybe a little abrupt, but not enough for him to mind. “You’re perfect.” 

“So you won’t mind if I fuck you harder.” 

Goddess. Just a few weeks and Felix is already like _ this_, has already learned how to make Sylvain’s brain instantly shut off, has decided how much he likes to be in control. And also how much he likes to be pinned down and made to take whatever Sylvain wants to give him, depending on his mood.

Sylvain gasps at the first rough thrust and moans at the second one. He grips the edge of the desk. They’ve really got to invest in some nice cuffs; Sylvain _ wants _ to let Felix tie him up and make him scream. Which is, to be fair, not something he was ever particularly opposed to in all of his other sexual encounters, but it’s never been his first choice and he’s usually used bonds he was pretty sure he could break. 

Felix could get nice thick metal ones with lots of padding, the sort Sylvain could tug and tug at without making any progress. 

“You seem distracted,” Felix says, maybe a tiny bit displeased. He thrusts harder, so yeah, definitely a little displeased. 

Sylvain lifts his head up from the desk long enough to talk without being muffled. “Kitten, I _ really _want you to tie me up.” 

There’s a pause, the hesitation of Felix’s hand tapping thoughtfully against his hip. “...Next time.” That’s Felix’s trying-not-to-laugh voice, and like, fair, considering Sylvain’s current situation. 

“Gonna hold you to that. Gonna go buy some nice strong cuffs for you to put on me.”

Another Felix-trying-not-to-laugh sound. 

“Kitteeeeen, fuck me harder.” 

Felix obliges. Sylvain grabs at the edge of the desk until the corners are leaving red marks in his hands and moans and yelps to his heart’s content. He’s never been one to stay quiet during sex, and he particularly isn’t going to stay quiet now when he needs Felix to know just how much Sylvain loves this. 

“Come inside me, Felix, pleeease,” he whines when he feels Felix’s movements getting jerky and desperate. Objectively gross? Probably. But it’s satisfying to watch Felix’s seed drip out of him afterward. It’s another tangible reminder of how no one else will ever have a claim on him. 

Afterward he feels warm and shaky and loved as Felix coaxes him away from the desk - which, uh, needs a little cleaning now - and toward the bath. Not totally blissed out, not out of his mind, just languid and clingy. So when they both slip into the water Sylvain traps Felix in his arms, sits down on the ledge and wraps his legs around Felix’s. 

It’s still nice, just as good as every other time he’s stolen a few minutes like this. Felix squeaks like he doesn't absolutely love Sylvain’s hugs. Sylvain ignores it, and Felix relaxes after only a few seconds, lets his head rest against Sylvain’s shoulder with this annoyed sigh. 

Felix, Sylvain is pretty sure, could escape whenever he wanted to. Sylvain’s stronger - lances are heavier than swords, and the constant horseback riding has given him thighs that double as strong and incredibly sexy - but Felix is this vicious bitey thing who was always too fond of brawling, and _ not as strong as Sylvain _is a category that includes pretty much everyone but the king. 

He carefully unwraps his limbs from Felix, who stays right where he is, content to curl up against Sylvain now that he has an excuse. It’s really, truly adorable how Felix looks so small like this, hair wet and determinedly still scowling and tucking himself against Sylvain’s chest. It’s not like he’s that small, really - pretty average, in Sylvain’s estimation. It’s just something about the way his oversized attitude contrasts with his pretty-damn-normal build that makes it impossible for Sylvain to resist picking him up and calling him by the cutest pet names Sylvain can think of. 

“Kitten,” he says, just to say it. Felix’s scowl deepens. “My kitten. My tiny, adorable - _ ow _,” Felix bites his shoulder hard enough to definitely leave a mark, “kitten. Yeah, yeah, maul me all you want with your cute little claws, leave a few more -” 

Felix twists out of his arms and then does _ something _too fast to see that yanks Sylvain from his comfortable perch on the side of the bath and dunks him. It’s a big bath, not swimming-pool sized but large enough to unceremoniously toss a large man away from the wall without worrying about him hitting his head. Sylvain resurfaces spluttering - he really didn’t see that coming. 

“Yeah, so aside from the cutesy stuff, all cats are assholes,” he says between coughing fits.

Felix looks exactly as smug as a cat. “What, am I supposed to apologize?” 

Sylvain considers. “Nah,” he finally says, returning to his seat. “Just come here again.” 

Felix does, pushes off from the other edge and glides over to Sylvain even though it’s shallow enough to walk in and it’s, at most, fifteen feet away. He settles back against Sylvain’s chest without even the pretense of a struggle. 

Sylvain, ever ready to ignore the lessons of a moment ago, kisses the top of Felix’s head. “My kitten,” he says again, and takes advantage of Felix’s willingness to stay to grab a handful of Felix’s tits and run his other hand over Felix’s stomach. He’s so compact and lithe, all firm and flexible. It’s really nice. 

“Didn’t I just fuck you?” Felix is apparently unimpressed. 

“Not everything has to be about sex, kitten,” Sylvain says in mock hurt. “I just wanna touch you.” It seems to buy him another few minutes of Felix time, settling back again and giving Sylvain free reign to run his hands across Felix’s chest and through the trail of dark hair leading down to his cock. He doesn’t do this enough, Sylvain decides, doesn’t spend enough time coaxing Felix into letting down his guard and then just admiring how perfect he is, stroking his scars and feeling the flex of his muscles. 

“Sylvain!” Felix finally whines while Sylvain’s slowly stroking the inside of Felix’s thighs, getting acquainted with how they feel when Felix isn’t being fucked. 

“Hmm?” he says, like he can’t see how Felix is half-hard again. “Aww, Fe,” Sylvain says, all syrupy sweetness. “What was that about how you _ just _ fucked me?” It isn’t _ just _ anymore. They’ve been here long enough for the water to start cooling down - not enough to be uncomfortable, but it isn’t steaming the way Felix prefers it. Felix grumbles under his breath, shifts like he’s torn between storming off to spite Sylvain and actually vocalizing what he wants. 

It is honestly tempting to watch him struggle, see if he wanders off to sulk or works up the courage to demand that Sylvain take care of him. It’s also pretty tempting to just jerk Felix off until he’s settled back into another relaxed post-sex haze. 

Sylvain has never been good at patience. Most of the exceptions to that have centered around Felix, but right now he doesn’t feel like adding to the list. He hauls Felix up onto the side of the bath - gets kicked in the shins for his effort - and casually grabs Felix’s dick, presses kisses to the tip, strokes his balls. It’s not his most skillful handjob, but Felix struggles for about half a second before going limp and making pleased, breathy sounds, and he comes pretty quick once Sylvain spends some time flicking his tongue against the frenulum. He catches it all in his mouth, half to see the look on Felix’s face and half so the water doesn’t get all gunky again. Dirty bathwater is, as far as Sylvain’s concerned, the gravest sin. 

“Mmm,” Felix says, satisfied and probably done for the evening after a couple good orgasms. Sylvain pulls him back into the water - Felix flops in completely gracelessly, presses himself back into Sylvain’s arms as soft and yielding as he’s ever been. “Wash my hair,” he says, because even satisfied from a couple good fucks Felix can be demanding. 

And, also, because he must have noticed how much Sylvain likes an excuse to bury his hands in Felix’s hair. He uses the good soap, the stuff he uses to keep his own beard healthy and soft enough that it doesn’t actually scratch up Felix’s skin, works it into Felix’s scalp and down to his awful - really terrible, horrendous, how did he manage to grow out his hair this much - split ends. 

“Don’t need that stuff,” Felix mutters. “It’s a waste of money.” 

Yeah, still a brat. “You like how soft my beard is, right?”

Felix grunts, but it’s one of the less-grumpy grunts. A grunt of annoyed agreement. 

“This stuff keeps it that way. And it might even keep your hair from turning into a gross mass of split ends and then falling off your head.” 

“Why would I care.” 

Sylvain pouts. “I like your hair.” He winds a few locks around his hand and gives it a tug for good measure. Felix stops arguing, lets himself by held and pampered in unnecessary little ways for once. 

He doesn’t haul them out of the water until it’s cool enough that Felix is shivering in little bursts that he tries to hide. He always did get cold easily. And even then Felix submits to being wrapped in a soft towel and kissed all along his shoulders, sighs while Sylvain brushes the tangles out of his hair and then tucks him into bed. It’s earlier than Felix usually goes to sleep, but Sylvain’s pretty sure Felix never sleeps enough so that can only be a good thing.

Felix curls up against his pillow, quiet and so vulnerable it almost hurts Sylvain to think about. He grabs a book and settles down next to Felix - it’ll be a while before he sleeps but at least he can keep Felix company. 

Sylvain pets at Felix’s hair, soft and still a little damp. “So am I doing a good job?” 

A slow blink, like Felix is confused and too tired to get pissed off over being confused. “At what.” 

“At taking care of you, kitten.” He smiles down at Felix and then beams when Felix blushes. 

“I suppose,” Felix says, scowls harder to hide his smile. 

* * *

They do actually catch up with Ingrid over breakfast the next day. She and Felix are at each other’s throats in about ten minutes, but it’s mostly in the quasi-cheerful way they’ve bickered since childhood. Sylvain’s pretty sure Felix would get bored if he didn’t have the opportunity to get into a real, knock-out, no-prisoners-taken argument every once in a while. 

But more importantly they tell her all about, well, _ them_. 

“You’re two of my oldest friends, you’ve been dancing around each other for at least a decade, and you didn’t tell me!” Ingrid’s clearly having trouble with that particular concept. 

“We’ve been busy,” Felix says for about the fifth time, and then offers absolutely no further explanation, also for the fifth time. 

“With _ what_? I mean, ruling a territory can’t be easy, but surely you had time to write a letter!”

“We’ve been _ busy_,” Felix says, and they glare at each other for a whole minute before Ingrid looks away to take another bite of her mediocre Faerghus cuisine. 

“Yeah, so,” Sylvain figures it’s time to stop internally snickering and start making sure Felix and Ingrid don’t actually start a blood feud, “I’m sure you heard that His Majesty was here, and then we spent some time further north to break the news to my parents, and it’s really just been a couple weeks since we got back. So, you know, we’ve mostly spent them fucking.” 

Felix chokes on his tea which, yeah, predictable. Sylvain definitely doesn’t deserve the horrified look Felix shoots him, though. 

“Come on, she walked in on us! She _ broke our door _ and then walked in on us. She can deal with the truth.” 

“I didn’t need to know that. I did _ not _need that level of detail,” Ingrid says, like she’s not the one who literally kicked their door down. 

“But I haven’t gone into the details at all. I mean, I could. They’re pretty great details.” He winks. Felix glares in the actually-annoyed-and-not-just-embarrassed way, so probably not. “Fine, fine, I’ll stick to more appropriate conversation topics. You wanna tell her how you told my parents to go fuck themselves?” 

“Really?” Ingrid says. “Tell me you didn’t start a war.” 

“I acted in perfect accordance with noble tradition,” Felix says stiffly. 

“Since when do _ you _talk like that? Tell me that doesn’t mean you dueled the Margrave. Sylvain, did he duel the Margrave?” 

“Incredibly, no. He scheduled an actual dinner meeting, right? And you know how he gets all cold and determined when there’s something he really has to do that he’s absolutely not going to lose at?” 

Ingrid nods. They’re all pretty familiar with Felix’s determined face, the one where he goes eerily calm and focused. “So he goes in like that, right? And it’s the tensest conversation I have ever heard, but Felix stays totally calm and when my parents bring up how I'm supposed to marry a noblewoman he’s like -” Sylvain drops his voice into his best Felix impression, sands off all the warmth he usually rests his words on - “‘let me be the first to congratulate you on obtaining a Duke instead.’” 

Sylvain physically can’t relive that moment without wanting to kiss Felix, and there’s very little reason to keep himself from doing that, so - Sylvain pulls Felix closer and plants one on him. It’s flavored by the tea he’s been drinking and by his scandalized noises, and also by Sylvain’s _ very _ dark and satisfied memories of the exact way his parents had looked like they were about to either die of shock or order Sylvain’s execution.

Felix settles a little closer against Sylvain’s side after he breaks the kiss, like he doesn’t want Sylvain to even think of things like that without the warm reminder that Felix is _ here_. He makes scoffing noises through the rest of Sylvain’s retelling.

Ingrid gasps at all the right moments. She hugs them both after their meal and Felix barely even complains. “I’m so proud of both of you,” she says. “I suppose I can forgive you for not writing just this once.”

* * *

Felix’s life is filled with as many meetings and agonizing decisions as ever. More, now that Fraldarius and the surrounding territories have started to settle back into relative normalcy after months of frantically working to distribute enough resources to survive. The problems of crop failure seem almost nostalgic to Felix after a week spent sitting around tables at Garreg Mach, listening to hours of nearly-identical proposals about the exact details of trade routes and treaties. 

At least his life is also filled with Sylvain. They rode down here together on wyvern back, Felix unwilling to spend more time than necessary away from still-fragile Fraldarius. He hates flying, truly; the air is too cold no matter how many layers he wraps himself in, his hands grow numb where they hold the reins, and the sides of the saddle chafe at his legs. It takes mere days to fly so far south but he complains about it every night, spitting invective about saddlemakers and useless mages who haven’t figured out how to warp him halfway across the continent on a whim. Sylvain listens tolerantly and at least pretends he’s not laughing at Felix, most of the time. 

At least Sylvain is warm against Felix’s back on their shared wyvern; at least he grins that masking smile at everyone _ except _Felix these days. 

When they land on a battlement that definitely isn’t designed for wyverns Sylvain stares around. “I have some really weird mixed memories of this place.” 

Felix shrugs. “We all do.” There isn’t a stone in Garreg Mach they didn’t spill blood and sweat onto. These walls have spent a thousand years absorbing the prayers of all of Fodlan, and one listening to the desperation of Felix and his closest friends. He’s not one for superstition, but it’s hard not to think of this place in particular as something alive that bears too much influence over them and their future. 

It’s nothing. Just another thought to ignore. The echoes he feels whenever he enters a room are products of his own mind, nothing more, phantom regrets. Sylvain keeps an arm looped around Felix’s waist whenever he can, but particularly when they’re passing the dorms or the graveyard. Felix lets him. 

On their last day before heading back to Fraldarius he lingers in front of the graveyard in spite of himself. 

“Do you want me to go with you, kitten?” Sylvain says, too soft for anyone else to hear. 

Felix wasn’t planning to visit any graves. He wasn’t planning to actually take the last few steps. 

“Okay,” he says. Sylvain kisses his forehead and hugs Felix a little tighter, leads him down the stairs. 

It’s an unassuming grave, still a terrible match for a Duke. Felix’s father isn’t even buried in the correct country. Felix stares at it - what do you say to the corpse of a man who abjectly failed at being a father? 

There are soft footsteps on the stairs behind him. The Professor - Achbishop - whatever - walks up and hands him a bouquet of blue flowers with her usual preternatural ability to always have the correct gift for the moment. 

“Why are you even here,” he says to the Archbishop of all Fodlan. She shrugs. 

Felix sighs. “I hated you,” he says to the grave even though he knows it’s a lie, and sighs again. “Fine. I don’t know. I didn’t hate you, but you were barely my father.” He tosses the flowers unceremoniously onto the grave. “I wish you had been.” 

Sylvain hugs him from behind. “So, I don’t know if you would have, like, approved or anything,” he says to the grave, “but I’m taking care of Felix. We’re taking care of each other.” 

Felix stares straight ahead. The world blurs around the edges despite his best efforts, tears lingering at the rims of his eyes. “That’s all,” Felix says. “I thought you should know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's one epilogue chapter down and one left. Being almost done with this thing feels pretty weird. 
> 
> You know the drill, let me know if you loved something or if you want to start a blood feud. Comments sustain me. Watch me say shit about fire emblem characters on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid).


	21. Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a flashback involving some suicidal thoughts.

The songs will tell you that the greatest love Felix had for Sylvain was shown in the many times they saved each other’s lives, in their roles as each others sword and shield. The songs are bullshit. 

The clearest evidence of Felix’s love for Sylvain is in how he agreed to a proper courtly wedding shortly after the region was stable enough to justify the time and expense. He approved guest lists, gave reluctant opinions on menus, and spent interminable hours sitting as tailors fussed over fit and embroidery, even though he would have preferred to get married in his most comfortable old tunic. He even kept the complaining to a minimum, by Felix’s standards. The actual wedding was a grand affair, attended by everyone who was anyone. Felix even danced. 

The stories will tell you Sylvain’s greatest gift to Felix was his heart or his faithfulness, some rubbish like that. As usual, the stories are wrong. 

The months leading up to their wedding didn’t sit right with Sylvain. Felix agreed to all of the usual extravagant festivities, but they both knew he probably wouldn't enjoy it, and Sylvain couldn’t live with the knowledge that Felix would be spending the first few hours of their marriage in quiet resentment. So Sylvain wrote some letters, made some plans, ensured some key figures would be in Fraldarius for a few extra days. 

Three nights before the official event Sylvain coaxed Felix out for a ride down to the beach, barely two miles from Fraldarius manor. It’s summer, warm enough to swim without freezing, and Sylvain always did like a good ride. 

Felix sighs with all of his usual longsuffering. “If you’re trying to fuck me on the beach I am going to stab you.” But he puts his boots on and follows Sylvain out the door, calm and trusting. He doesn't even argue when Sylvain pulls Felix up onto the horse behind him, just sighs again and wraps his arms around Sylvain’s waist. 

“It’s a surprise. You’ll like it,” Sylvain says. Felix does not, as a rule, approve of surprises, but Sylvain’s pretty sure he’ll make an exception for this one. 

Felix makes a dramatic little huffing noise, the kind that’s purely for show, and then relaxes against Sylvain’s back for the rest of the comfortable ride to the shore. 

They leave the horse before the edge of the sand. Sylvain leads them to the left, toward a glowing patch of light with laughter echoing around it. It’s close enough to make out the cheerful voices, so clearly belonging to Felix’s friends. He stops before they get to its perimeter and looks over at Felix - his eyes are wide, darting between Sylvain and the fire like he has a suspicion that he’s terrified to voice. And, well, it was supposed to be a complete surprise, but Sylvain is nothing if not good at noticing Felix’s discomfort. 

One of the figures in the firelight waves at them; Sylvain waves back, makes a _ just a minute _gesture and pulls Felix close. His hands know exactly how to stroke Felix’s back in the way he finds most soothing, until Felix untenses enough to look up. 

“Sylvain? What is this?” Felix asks, so much softer than usual. 

Sylvain wraps Felix up a little more securely in his arms before answering. “It’s our wedding, kitten.”

Felix blinks a few times, looks over at the firelight, and back at Sylvain, and to the fire again. They’re close enough to make out the shape of the figures, Annette and Mercedes, Flayn, the King and Ashe and Dedue. The Archbishop is lying back in the sand. She brought a fishing rod and keeps looking wistfully toward the water. Ingrid stands closest, tapping her foot and probably shooting Sylvain impatient glares. 

“The wedding is in three days,” Felix whispers. 

“I mean, the big party we invited all of the diplomats to is in three days, and we can’t exactly cancel it without causing a few problems. This is the real wedding, the one that matters.” And, hey, the Archbishop and the King are both here and onboard with the whole plan, so it’s about as official as anything can possibly be. 

“You’re serious,” Felix says, flat as anything, pressed warm in Sylvain’s arms. 

“I’m serious. What sort of husband would I be if I let you hate the first few hours of our marriage?” It’s not, like, as big a deal as everyone says it is, the marriage thing. But it’s still nice. Sylvain likes to belong, and a wedding is a simple thing that everyone recognizes as a promise. He kisses the corner of Felix’s mouth, chaste and sweet, and laughs into the kiss when Felix deepens it eagerly. “Pretty sure you’re not supposed to kiss me like that until after we say our vows,” he teases. 

“Why would I care,” Felix says. He’s smiling as he takes Sylvain’s hand and leads them both toward the fire. 

Cheers spread through the little circle as everyone Felix loves applauds his entrance. He’s flushed and smiling as wide as Sylvain’s ever seen him. The radiance of Felix’s happiness and the warmth of the light settle under the surface of his skin, lighting him up, the most luminous thing Sylvain has ever seen. Or maybe that’s just because Sylvain’s still completely smitten. Anyway, he’s beautiful enough Sylvain can’t resist another kiss despite Felix’s teasing admonition, digging his fingers really deep in Felix’s hair and kissing him breathless where everyone important can see. 

Felix pushes away at the first laughter. He doesn’t let go of Sylvain’s hand. It’s pretty much perfect. 

Mercedes stands up from her place on the sand. “Now that we’re all here, shall we continue to the ceremony? Don’t worry,” she says to them, “I didn’t plan on any long sermons.” 

Sylvain pulls Felix onward. “The fire’s where the party is afterwards,” he says to Felix’s confusion. “I picked a different place for the vows. You okay with walking a bit?” 

The ceremony location is why they're here now, after dark, with the tide retreated enough to uncover the little rocky cove set five minutes walk down the beach. It’s unexceptional. There are dozens like it up and down the Fraldarius coastline. 

But once upon a time Felix was an exuberant seven-year-old who hadn’t learned yet that the world was full of things to fear, and Sylvain was a ten-year-old with a healing broken arm who was more aware of the world’s spite than any child should be. Seven-year-old Felix spent the whole day after Sylvain arrived running around, trying to cheer him up without really knowing what was wrong or why he was hurt. All of the usual things didn’t work - he couldn’t climb trees, and Sylvain didn’t want to share Felix’s favorite snacks, and watching Glenn practice filled his whole core with a resentment he didn’t recognize and couldn’t process. 

They ended up here. Even though Felix wasn’t supposed to venture this close to the water without an adult, because here it would be a while before anyone found them, because Sylvain had been sad and sullen all day and Felix was just a child who didn’t know how to fix anything, and it would be years before he’d comprehend that the people closest to you could hurt you in ways other than calling you dumb nicknames and insisting you’re too young for a real sword. 

The ocean waves were always a soothing sound, a rhythmic rush of salt and sea the world saw fit to bestow upon them. Felix sat huddled next to Sylvain until the tide rolled in almost to their toes, salt spray filling the air, soaking their coats, flavoring every word they said. 

It was, at the time, tempting to stay there until the ocean rolled over Sylvain. There wouldn’t be any more broken arms, just icy water rushing into his lungs and the coldness of the ocean depths wrapping around him. Salt is good for disinfecting wounds, right? Sylvain was already all wounds, stuck together with thin membranes of skin and thought. 

But Felix was there. And Felix, right after he cast a worried look at the rising waves and suggested they go back home for, like, the third time, hugged Sylvain gently enough that it didn’t even hurt against his healing arm and said, with none of his usual enthusiasm, “Sylvain? We’re going to stay together, right? Until we die?” 

Even as a child Sylvain was pretty helpless in the face of that. He’d agreed. He’d even meant it, hugged Felix back hard and said “yeah, we’ll always stay together, Fe. Until we die.” 

He couldn’t let the ocean take him after that. It would break his friend’s heart, and then break it again. So he let Felix drag him back home, to an evening that involved food and warm fires and a mild scolding from the worried Duke. Felix acted like being told he shouldn’t wander around on the beach alone was the worst fate in the world, and Sylvain couldn’t even hate him for it. 

The cove is unchanged, give or take a few fallen rocks and the presence of a handy selection of the most powerful people on the continent. Felix’s eyes widen; Sylvain squeezes his hand and can’t contain his grin, is absolutely incapable of not kissing Felix again when they step onto the rocks where they made their promise. 

They haven’t been here together in years. It’s just another little collection of rocks in the sea, but Sylvain’s figured out how Felix is a bit of a romantic despite his best attempts to hide it. 

“So,” he says, once he breaks the kiss - this one involved enough tongue that it was maybe inappropriate for present company, even on their wedding night - “do you like the venue?” 

Felix nods wordlessly and presses against Sylvain’s chest, glaring out at their small audience like they’re really going to challenge it now, of all times. 

“Good. Good kitten,” Sylvain says just for the two of them, just to feel Felix’s shiver. 

Louder, he says, “So, Mercie, will you do the honors? Think we’re sort of impatient here.” 

“Of course!” She steps up around them, presiding over the wedding and facing the crowd. Sylvain could have asked the Archbishop, but nah. Mercie’s been a big part of the last few years of their lives. 

“Friends, family,” she beams around. Mercedes is always, at minimum, cheerful-looking. Today she looks like a sunflower at noon. “We gather today -” she giggles, “tonight, in the very place where Felix and Sylvain vowed to spend their lives together twenty years ago, to formalize that vow in the view of the country, the goddess, and most importantly in the view of their loved ones.”

Their loved ones. This really is everyone living who Felix loves, everyone whose opinion matters, everyone he’d even consider letting his guard down around. It’s a small circle, but not that small considering how high those requirements are.

Sylvain works a hand into Felix’s hair again. Felix has pressed his whole face into Sylvain’s shoulder and is taking long, determined breaths like he’s too overwhelmed to do anything else. It seems like the good sort of overwhelmed, but Sylvain keeps stroking Felix’s hair just in case. 

“A long speech felt inappropriate under the circumstances,” Mercedes said. It’s more like a conversation than anything. “But I did feel like we needed a few of the traditional things. So, Annette, if you would provide music?” 

Annette steps up, flushing, looking a little excited and a little like she’d rather be anywhere else. Felix peeks out from Sylvain’s shoulder when she speaks. 

“I only agreed to this because Felix likes my songs,” she says, tiny and almost furious, “so you had better not laugh.” It’s a great sentence to say to a crowd that includes both the King and the Archbishop. Her voice starts out tremulous but quickly gains confidence, and Sylvain’s pretty impressed at the lyrics considering he only thought to ask her to sing a few days ago.

_Here in the night_  
_Say that you’ll stay_  
_Through winter’s chill_  
_And in the light of day_

_Hold on to your love_  
_Here under ocean spray_  
_Know through the rest of time_  
_Your hearts won’t betray_

_Tomorrow calls, forever comes_  
_In this place of promises_  
_Laughter rings, your friends will sing_  
_Throughout all darkness_

From his angle Sylvain catches that Felix mouths something to Annette as she scurries out of the crowd’s view - _ thank you_? Probably something of that sort. But more importantly Mercedes is speaking again. 

“I believe you have some vows to make. Sylvain?” 

That was fast. He didn’t really, like, prepare anything - he has stuff written for the big wedding they invited all of the nobles to, but it doesn't all feel like _ him_. 

“Felix. My Felix,” he says. Felix still has his face pressed into Sylvain’s shoulder; it is not in the traditional sense romantic, except for Felix it absolutely is. “Hey, can I say it? Just this once? In front of people?” 

Felix looks up long enough to nod. 

“_Thank _you,” Sylvain says, and also turns to the crowd. “Hey, so if any of you laugh I’m not gonna stop him from stabbing you.” But Felix is much more important than any of those guys right now, so he he guides Felix’s head back far enough to kiss his forehead. 

“Felix. My kitten.” No laughs; good. “You make me feel like I have a home. I love waking up next to you, I love holding you, I love how you get angry at the stupidest things. I love how you fuck me-” because, really, would it be their wedding if he didn’t say at least one thing that made Felix glare like that? “- and I love having you by my side. Stay with me forever, okay?” 

Felix nods. He’s been doing a lot of that tonight. “I accept,” he says in the softest voice. 

“Felix accepts,” Mercedes repeats loud enough for their gathered friends to hear. “Now, Felix. Your vows?” 

Felix stays pressed into Sylvain’s shoulder for long enough that he’s almost worried. Then Felix steps back far enough that he isn’t muffled. Sylvain keeps his hand in Felix’s hair, half for Felix’s comfort and half because he just really likes Felix’s hair. 

“This asshole didn’t tell me we were getting married,” is the first thing Felix says. 

“Sorry.” Sylvain can’t help grinning, though. 

“I’ll forgive you. Sylvain,” Felix takes a few breaths Sylvain recognizes as the steadying sort, “in the eyes of god and country, in front of our friends, I want you by my side forever. Okay?” 

And Sylvain is about to lean in with his own “I do”, but Felix continues. “I love you. I _ love _you, understand?” Which, like, still typical Felix. “I want to spend every moment I can with you. I want to live together for a very long time and then die together, after we’ve done everything we want to do. I’ll never regret you, Sylvain.” 

And, okay, that’s still very on brand for Felix, but this was supposed to be _ Felix’s _ night. Now Sylvain’s tearing up because he’s never been able to hear that sort of loving, determined acceptance without something in the back of his head saying he doesn’t deserve it, because he _ knows _ Felix doesn’t lie about things like that. He sniffles. 

Felix is blinking a little too fast, trying to hold in tears for probably the same reason. 

Sylvain almost forgets to respond, he’s so caught up in how perfect Felix is in this moment. “I love you, I do, I’ll always want you.” It isn’t proper to pull Felix close again before they’ve been properly bonded, but Sylvain’s pretty sure nothing could force them apart. They’re each other’s. They’ve belonged to each other for a long time, for years before either of them realized it, and now it’s a new sort of official. 

“Under the circumstances I believe that’s good enough,” Mercedes says, voice full of mirth. “Your Holiness? Your Majesty? Do these two have your blessing?” 

The Archbishop nods and smiles as much as she ever does. “They have my blessing.” She doesn’t seem inclined to do anything else.

The King came much more prepared. He’s carrying a fancy cord and everything. 

“Didn’t think you were into bondage, Your Majesty,” Sylvain says, because how does one navigate this sort of situation if not through inappropriate humor? He can feel Felix’s quiet laugh, so it’s definitely worth it. 

“Please, give me your hands,” the King says, holding out the rope. 

Sylvain shoves Felix away as gently as possible, just far enough to make space between them. His Majesty wraps the rope around their joined hands carefully, like he’s afraid his enormous strength would break two of his friends at once. And Felix, for a very rare moment, locks eyes with Sylvain, honey gold gaze hitting him like a physical force, like Felix’s stare alone could keep him satisfied for a century. The rope is rough around their joined hands, but not as rough or present as Felix’s calloused fingertips. Dimitri’s voice is saying something about their union, but it can’t break through Sylvain’s entrancement or Felix’s transfixing stare. 

And fuck tradition, right? They’re already breaking tradition by getting married _ this _way, with such a small audience, throwing a glorified reception dinner for the rest of the world. Felix is here; Felix has been his for years already, vows or no vows, and if anyone really wants to get technical they promised to stay together twenty years ago. 

So, following the most reasonable and satisfying course of action Sylvain’s followed in his entire life, he pulls Felix in for a really _ satisfying _kiss, the sort that leaves both of them completely desperate and breathless, the sort that involves gracelessly shoving his tongue into Felix’s mouth. 

Except in a turn of events that leaves Sylvain kind of stunned, Felix does it first. It isn't Sylvain breaking tradition and scandalizing the nation by starting a completely inappropriate kiss during his wedding, it’s Felix leaning up and yanking Sylvain down by the collar and kissing like his life depends on it, like leaving Sylvain unable to breathe or think is the most important action in the world.

It’s great. Somewhere Mercedes is laughing; somewhere Dimitri sputters in embarrassed shock. None of that matters. Mercedes’ voice saying “Congratulations, you are husband and husband,” does break through, but that really only spurs Sylvain to kiss harder and fumble his hands down to Felix’s ass, nice and muscular. There’s a whole chorus of whistles at this point. Felix doesn’t seem to care, since he’s yanking at Sylvain’s hair in just the way that makes Sylvain really long for a nice sturdy headboard and set of cuffs. 

They do finally break apart before they try to strip each other, not that it decreases how damned horny Sylvain is now. Mercedes is still laughing; Dimitri is still waiting in flustered confusion for the return of his ceremonial cord. 

“This is where I would normally say ‘you may kiss’,” Mercedes says, finally containing her laughter. “But you seem to have that under control. May I present Felix Hugo Fraldarius and Sylvain Jose Gautier, husbands and partners through the rest of their lives.” 

Applause sweeps the small crowd. Annette and Flayn catch each other an exuberant, improvised dance, the Archbishop claps, Ashe wipes away a few tears as Dedue smiles at both of them.

Ingrid whoops and nearly trips in her haste to hug them, grabbing Felix and Sylvain both around the waist. “Congratulations. Try not to drive each other too crazy.” 

Sylvain gives a quick brotherly kiss to the top of her head. “But that’s half the point, Ingrid! Why would Felix marry me if he didn’t like being constantly annoyed?” 

Felix just laughs like he can’t help himself and hugs her back, until Sylvain carefully detangles himself to pick Mercedes up and sweep her around. “That was the best ceremony we could have had, Mercie. Thank you.” Over in the corner of his vision Ingrid’s, like, weeping happily onto Felix’s shoulder. 

“I hope it brings you joy and luck,” Mercedes says, not at all perturbed at suddenly being suspended in a hug. 

Sylvain places her gently back onto solid ground and kisses the top of her head as well. “It already has.” 

There are presents, hugs and congratulations. Felix protests exactly as much as Sylvain expects him to - even at his own wedding he can’t shut up and let Dimitri hug him without a few half-hearted barbs. But everyone can tell they’re just for show.

None of the gifts are elaborate. House Fraldarius and House Gautier will receive plenty of expensive presents from other nobles, jewelry and resources, things they need and a heaping pile of things Felix will scoff at and probably trade away before too long. The gifts here are personal, exchanged around a fire between the closest of friends. A book from Ashe, a promise of future songs from Annette, baskets of savory pastries from Dedue and Mercedes, a whole pile of cool swords found at various markets from the group at large. 

Flayn and Byleth are the winners of gift-giving, despite the best efforts of everyone else. They’ve been keeping a woven basket between them, and Flayn jumps excitedly to her feet when it’s her turn. 

“Felix! Did I ever inform you that Nuisance had kittens? A beautiful litter, just under a year ago.” 

“What’s a Nuisance?” Sylvain stage-whispers to Felix. He’s ignored. 

“Nuisance is his favorite cat,” Flayn announces proudly. She carefully opens the basket and coaxes out a - a cat. It’s a cat. Flayn and the professor brought a cat all the way from Garreg Mach. It’s mottled black and white and it hisses as soon as it sees the crowd of people. 

“Oh dear,” Flayn says, crestfallen. “Perhaps actually bringing her here was a bad idea.” The cat jumps back into the basket and carefully pokes its head out, glaring at the crowd. 

“You never told me you had a favorite cat. Is it the one that was always hanging around at the training grounds?” The really grumpy one that scratched up Sylvain’s hands more than once when he tried to pet it. How fitting. 

Felix looks, honestly, like he might cry. “What’s her name?” 

Flayn beams. “The Archbishop and I thought you should choose.” 

Felix kneels gently next to the basket, holding his hand out carefully until the cat noses at it curiously. He’s smiling. “Odd,” he finally says. “Her name’s Odd.” 

“Okaaay,” Sylvain says. “Why that name?” 

“Because it fits,” Felix says, glaring at him and offering no further explanation. Sylvain’s pretty sure he just became Felix’s second-favorite person at his own wedding. 

After an hour spent relaxing in the warmth of family Sylvain figures it’s probably time to go. Felix is pensive and content, soaking in the laughter of those around him, lying back and petting the cat who did, eventually, hesitantly leave the safety of its box and immediately decide that Felix is its favorite person. Which, fitting. But in the last few minutes Felix’s eyes have started drifting over to Sylvain more, something like impatience hiding in them, and well. It’s their wedding night, they’re allowed to leave the party early. 

“I think it’s time for us to do a little private celebrating,” Sylvain says to the general dismay of the crowd. Hard to tell if it’s at the thought of them leaving or at the obvious innuendo. Really, it’s probably a combination of both. 

The mages insist on warping them back to the manor; the crowd as a whole promises to take care of their horse and deliver their pile of presents tomorrow, nice and late in the morning. Felix even reluctantly hands Odd back to Flayn before they’re gathered up into a last round of hugs and herded together by the mages, sent back home in a swell of white light. 

They appear in the courtyard of the manor. It’s late; the only people out here are the guards, who startle but don’t otherwise remark on the appearance of their lord. Felix falls into Sylvain’s arms heedless of their audience. His breathless laughter is the best sound Sylvain can remember hearing, and it’s Felix who tugs them inside and rushes them up to the privacy of their room, who jumps on Sylvain like a delighted, wild thing once they’re properly in private. 

It’s a little hard to talk around the way Felix is, basically, mauling him in a very sexy way - wrapping his legs around Sylvain’s waist, yanking at his hair, alternating between leaving bruising bites on his neck and kissing deep and frantic, licking into Sylvain’s mouth like it’s the best thing Felix has ever tasted. 

But Sylvain’s got a couple important things to say that don’t want to wait until whenever Felix decides to slow down. 

“Kitten,” Sylvain starts to say, and then laughs into the kiss that cuts him off. He pushes Felix’s shoulders away gently. “Seriously, kitten, let me _ talk_.” 

Even on his wedding night Felix finds excuses to glare. It’ll always be cute. But he does stop climbing all over Sylvain, which was technically the goal but is already a huge disappointment. 

“You’re my husband,” Sylvain says, setting Felix back onto the floor and pulling him into an enormous hug, burying his face in Felix’s hair. “You’re mine, like, officially.” 

“I was already yours,” Felix says. He almost sounds offended before he hugs Sylvain back, settling all of his weight into Sylvain’s arms and sighing out all of his breath.

“I did good, right? Was there anything I missed?” He nips at Felix’s ear, just because it’s there. 

“You did. Thank you, Sylvain.” It sounds formal, like Felix is delivering an official commendation. Sylvain will take it. 

“Soooo, it’s our wedding night. How do you want to celebrate? Tie me down? Make me beg?” Holding Felix like this is great, perfect, perfectly enough, honestly. He’ll hold Felix for as long as it’s allowed. But fucking is good too. 

“Good question.” Felix reaches his hands back into Sylvain’s hair, not pulling this time, just running his hands through, scratching the blunt tips of his fingers against Sylvain’s scalp. 

It’s sexy because literally everything Felix does is sexy, but mostly it’s just nice in how it makes Sylvain feel warm and cared for. He could celebrate by letting Felix spend all night stroking gently at his hair. “You’re my husband,” Sylvain says again. He likes the feel of the word and how it’s preceded by _ my_. “All mine. My Felix, my kitten, my husband. You fit so perfectly in my arms.” 

Fate is bullshit; all those books about people being born for each other don’t know what they’re talking about. Felix is shaped perfectly for Sylvain’s arms because he chooses to be; he kisses like they were made for each other because they’ve already spent a lifetime together. Felix knows exactly how much Sylvain likes having his hair stroked because he pays attention to things like that under all of the sharp edges, knows exactly what all of Sylvain’s favorite things are. They’ll never regret each other. 

“How do you want to celebrate?” Felix finally asks. 

“Hey, I’m supposed to be asking you that,” Sylvain says into Felix’s warmth. “This is about you.” 

Okay, now the gentle stroking turns back into a sharp tug. Sylvain whines and doesn’t resist at all, perfectly content to let Felix do whatever he likes.

“I thought there were two of us involved,” Felix snaps. 

“Sure are,” Sylvain says. The hand is his hair is keeping him from leaning close enough to kiss Felix. Pity. “I’m your husband too. Forever and ever.” He can’t even stop the ridiculous grin at the words. Not that they weren’t each other’s before - they’d already agreed to stay together until they died, like, a whole bunch of times, starting with that one time as children. Felix has kind of a thing for demanding that Sylvain stay with him forever, and Sylvain has kind of a thing for agreeing. 

“Well,” Felix says, drawing out the word with at least a small amount of contempt, “how do you want to celebrate, Sylvain?” He finally lets go of Sylvain’s hair again, so of course Sylvain surges forward to get a good armful of Felix before he considers. 

First of all he wants to pick Felix up so he does that, coaxes Felix’s legs around his waist again and gets a good palmful of Felix’s ass. Felix waits, lets himself be maneuvered, tolerant and impatient. 

It’s a really nice ass. Sylvain digs his fingers into it. “You’re going to ride me,” he says, and carries Felix over to their roomiest plush chair, settling them both down so Felix is still straddling his lap. “You’re gonna ride me nice and slow.” 

Felix’s smile is almost too blinding to be real. His smiles have become more and more frequent over the last few years, but Sylvain’s never seen him smile as much as he has tonight. 

“Good choice,” Felix says, grinding down slowly. He reaches back to untie his own hair, letting it fall over his shoulders. The effect would be more dramatic if it wasn’t creased from being in a ponytail all day, but it’s still pretty gorgeous. 

The flow of dark hair is so tempting that Sylvain wraps a few locks around his hand, not really pulling, just anchoring Felix in place while he starts undoing the buttons of Felix’s tunic one-handed. At this point Sylvain’s an expert at getting Felix out of his clothes, and Felix is an expert at squirming under Sylvain’s grasp like he doesn’t love being stripped. He lets Felix go when he reaches the last button, shoves the shirt off Felix’s shoulders and onto the floor while Felix presses forward, bites Sylvain’s lower lip hard enough to hurt - _ ow _\- and then pulls away, eyes closed, to kiss Sylvain’s forehead. 

“I love you,” Sylvain gasps out, warmth spreading just from the brush of Felix’s lips, and then Felix laughs soft and delighted, a private sound that even Sylvain barely ever hears and like, honestly? He could go blind and deaf and dumb and spend the rest of his life satisfied by the memory of this moment of Felix’s laughter. 

“Did you actually want me to ride you at some point, or are you just going to stare?” Felix asks, a challenge that Sylvain feels pretty comfortable ignoring. He runs his hands over Felix’s shoulders - strong muscles and sharp joints that there isn’t nearly enough fat to soften - pulls him down for a slow kiss, nice and deep but absolutely unhurried, taking his time to taste Felix as much as he likes. Felix makes these cute contented humming noises when he’s relaxed and pleased and comfortable, when for one moment he’s slowed down enough to not worry about the future or drown himself in the past. He’s making them now. 

“I’ll get there,” Sylvain says reassuringly, and palms Felix’s cock. That part’s probably not reassuring, but Felix jolts up into it. 

“Sylvain,” he hisses out. It could potentially be intimidating under some circumstances, but definitely not under this one. 

But Sylvain’s nothing if not an attentive boyfriend - husband - so he does take mercy and starts undoing Felix’s pants, shoves them off his hips while Felix rises and then pulls them down the rest of the way when Felix settles back down onto Sylvain’s lap and squirms out of them one leg at a time. Yeah, they’ve got a system. And Felix is there, naked and hard and rocking impatiently on Sylvain’s lap, wearing his most delighted little smile. 

The moon’s full tonight. It’s not shining directly through their window but even the reflected glow’s enough to illuminate Felix in burning silver, trickling light down the hard lines of his muscles and painting gentle fire into his hair. Sylvain can’t really resist any longer, is actually going to die immediately if he doesn’t have Felix’s bare skin pressed directly against his own, and Felix doesn’t seem inclined to argue when Sylvain guides his hands to Sylvain’s own shirt. 

It isn’t a very good shirt. If Felix was armed he’d probably cut it off in an instant. Instead he sighs and works his way down the laces until it’s undone enough to fit over Sylvain’s broad shoulders. Sylvain kicks his pants off while Felix is occupied, and then they’re just there, pressed together, Felix sharp and radiant above him. 

He’ll get around to fucking Felix eventually. It’s a pleasant longing in his chest, not some urgent need. They have forever to fuck each other’s brains out. Sylvain only has one first night of their marriage to savor. Felix doesn't even fight being pulled down into another bear hug - he makes one of those contented sounds Sylvain loves to hear so much and curls himself up small enough to fit under Sylvain’s chin, always so soft and yielding under his jagged surface. 

“You’re mine,” Felix says quietly. “You’ll always be mine.” 

“Sure will,” Sylvain says, and this time when he goes in for a kiss he closes his eyes so Felix can comfortably keep his open. Felix lets his lips be coaxed apart calm and unhurried, all of his desperation evaporating under Sylvain’s soft attention. There’s no need to rush forever. 

Sylvain finally does fumble around in the drawer of the little table next to the chair. It took a few months of living together, but ages ago they just started keeping lube and towels in easy reach of all the places they tend to fuck. Felix’s official desk even has a little bottle tucked away in one of the drawers. Chances are that all of the advisors have stumbled on it at some point while looking for actual important documents, but you know what? Sylvain couldn’t give less of a shit that the advisors know the duke sometimes has sex on the desk.

Anyway, the lube. Sylvain retrieves it without looking up from the kisses he’s lavishing on Felix, opens it one-handed - he has skills in a very specific area, okay - and snickers at how Felix noticeably perks up at the sound. Is _ precious _ the right word for how eager Felix gets? 

“See, I’m getting to it,” Sylvain says, slicking up his fingers and rubbing just around Felix’s rim, snickering more at how Felix gasps and tries to squirm back onto them. “I said you’re going to ride me _ slow_, kitten. Can’t you be a little patient?” 

Felix, in the most predictable act of his life, makes a frustrated growly sigh and and then bites Sylvain’s shoulder. Again. Like, Sylvain’s into the biting - he’s _ so _into the biting, some mornings he gets up and just admires the bite marks and hickeys perennially covering his torso and thighs. On days when Felix is away he usually does finger at the bruises on his thighs and jerk himself off, pretending that the pressure of his own hands could begin to compare with what Felix does to him. Still, this is starting to seem a little excessive for their wedding night. 

“You’re supposed to be _ nice _to me, Fe.” 

Felix takes a break from sucking at Sylvain’s neck and hitching his hips back into Sylvain’s hand to look up. “I’m being nice. In what way am I not being nice?” 

“I mean, yeah, you sure are. I want you to be _ gentle _ nice.”

Felix frowns at the bruise he was making. “You don’t want marks?” 

And, again, Sylvain is _ so into _the biting thing but he’s also pretty fucking into Felix being gentle and soft. Still, maybe a few more bruises. “Only a few.” He flicks Felix’s nose, which is the sort of thing that would definitely provoke a new bite normally. 

And, like, he’s pretty sure he can see Felix restraining himself, eyes following Sylvain’s hand, teeth bared in aggrieved annoyance, but he settles for an exasperated sigh. 

“Good. Good kitten.” He runs his free hand through Felix’s silky hair, just once. 

“You can mark me as much as you want,” Felix offers through his sudden vivid blush. Four years and he still can’t admit how much he loves that sort of praise. Maybe someday. Felix sweeps his hair back from one side of his neck and shoulders, offering them like some sort of gift. 

Which they are, because Felix prefers marks on his thighs and low on his torso, places where he doesn’t have to worry about picking the right shirt to cover them up in the morning. Felix probably knows exactly what he’s offering, always does, but just in case - 

“Hey, Fe, doesn’t your fancy wedding outfit have a lower collar than most of the stuff you wear?” Sylvain has, despite all of Faerghus tradition regarding keeping wedding outfits a surprise or whatever, seen Felix in his already. It’s white and blue and gold and has embellished thigh high boots that Sylvain has some very definite plans for. 

“It is,” Felix says, and doesn’t turn away. 

“You really are being nice to me. There’s just one more little thing I want, Fe. think you can do me one more favor?” 

“Possibly,” Felix says, but his smirk says _ yes_. 

“Don’t be so quiet this time.” Felix has a habit of biting back every sound he makes, caging them inside his throat like it’s a personal victory to keep Sylvain from hearing them. Some days he likes to spend a long time teasing until even Felix can’t keep quiet any longer. Today he just wants Felix to trust him with his soft sounds of pleasure. “Let me hear how good I make you feel.” 

Felix is blushing all the way down his chest now. So cute, the full-body blush is still one of the top five things about naked Felix. 

“You’re so good to me. You’ll let me hear how much you like my cock, right? You’ll be a good kitten for me, won’t you?” Sylvain drops his voice to the purr that he knows is enough to get Felix to pop a boner all by itself. The sensation of Felix shuddering against him is always transcendent, but especially right now. Disappointingly, it isn’t accompanied by a noise. 

“Come on, Fe. Don’t you like it when I talk like this? Don’t you love being my kitten?” Another quiet shudder. 

“You know I can feel how you twitch when I say that, right? Look, you’re cock’s leaking and I’ve barely touched you.” It is, smearing with precum, even though Sylvain’s still just talking and brushing feather-light touches over Felix’s entrance. “Felix, _ kitten_, go on, let me know when I make you feel good, let me hear those lovely needy sounds you make.” 

This time the shudder is accompanied by a tiny whimper. It’s not loud. But it is, compared to Felix’s usual militant quiet, almost certainly intentional. 

“My perfect kitten, listen to how beautiful you sound, you’re all mine, right? You’ll do what I want?” 

Felix is red and gasping, twitching back against Sylvain’s hand and forward to try to grind his dripping cock against Sylvain’s stomach, making the sorts of whimpers he usually wouldn’t even start until he was properly fucked out. He really is playing nice tonight. 

That means it’s time for Sylvain to fill his half of the bargain, right? Felix is doing everything he was asked, so Sylvain says “Such a good little kitten,” for good measure, bites down on the curve of Felix’s neck and presses two fingers into his entrance at the same time. 

Felix goes limp under Sylvain’s mouth and frantic under his fingers, trying to surrender and get _ more _at the same time. The most beautiful whine leaves his throat. 

“That was so good. Keep being loud for me.” He’s not planning to spend too much time teasing - this is about both of them, really and honestly. Sylvain brushes his lips over to Felix’s throat, noses at the adams apple where he can feel the hum of Felix’s voice. It’s not a bite this time, just a slow, careful series of sucks and kisses until Sylvain’s sure it’ll still be marked bright a few nights from now. He likes Felix’s voice, and as soon as the first round of whimpers die down Sylvain reaches his fingers around for the spot of smooth tissue he perfectly mapped out years ago. 

The needy little yelp is barely even recognizable as Felix’s, it’s so uncharacteristic, so cute that Sylvain keeps rubbing over it, listening to all of Felix’s musical, reedy gasps and hissed encouragements. He’s arching like it’ll spur Sylvain on, or like he’s just that determined to show Sylvain his pleasure in every way he can. 

“You’ll be so loud when I fuck you, right? Are you gonna scream for me, kitten?” 

It’s actually a miracle straight from the god of unnecessarily intense swordsmen or whatever when Felix actually responds with a shaky little “I’ll try. I will,” looking up at Sylvain, blinking like he might actually start crying like he almost did earlier.

Which, beautiful, incredible, one more image of Felix that Sylvain’s committing to memory, but maybe he’s pushing a little hard considering the circumstances. Or maybe it’s just been an emotional evening and Felix is still not terribly good at dealing with those. 

“And you’re so good to _ me_. You try so hard for me, you always take care of me.” Felix is nice and loose already, and it’s not like either of them is starting from square one. “You want me to work you open some more?” 

He’s about ninety percent sure that Felix is about to demand to be fucked. But Felix gets this adorable smirk when he’s planning something he thinks might actually surprise Sylvain and he’s wearing it now. Felix doesn’t actually answer, but he does reach back and slip one of his own fingers in beside Sylvain’s and okay, yeah, that one does actually surprise Sylvain a little. 

“You could stretch me a bit more,” Felix says, voice steady again. He gets all confident when he’s following his own ideas instead of Sylvain’s. And Sylvain can feel Felix’s finger pressing in and out in careful rhythm against his own, also stroking over that sweet spot, sparking moan after soft moan from Felix’s lips. 

Sylvain’s been hard for about a century at this point, but he may have achieved a whole new height of hardness. A henceforth undiscovered number on the Mohs scale. Which, in fact, could be Felix’s plan? In any case Sylvain’s not eager to hesitate any longer, not now that he can hear Felix’s soft moans and feel him finger himself from the inside, and also - Sylvain makes a mental note to explore this particular thing at length, maybe fit an extra finger or two inside himself next time it’s his turn to take, and anyway - anyway. 

Felix, Sylvain, Felix riding Sylvain. Right. He recovers the presence of mind to pull his hand away and swat Felix’s hand away as well - it retreats and Felix gives a breathy sigh that _ must _be just for Sylvain’s reaction, which is not at all a problem. 

“C’mon. My cock’s right here for you,” Sylvain says. Not his sexiest line. Good thing Felix is beyond caring about the quality of his dirty talk, both in this particular encounter and as a person. 

Felix sliding down onto Sylvain’s cock always feels like some form of heaven. Soft and slick, warm and yielding, shaped just for him, especially with the way Felix clamps down like his life depends on it. But the best thing about fucking Felix is that there’s this moment, right when Felix is finally filled, where he forgets to be quiet. 

Even after years of this something about taking Sylvain still overwhelms him a little. Felix always recovers quickly, but there’s these few precious seconds where he’s in some headspace that’s distant and overcome with sensation. Fucking Felix through it without letting him adjust is pretty much the easiest way to get him to forget himself, is a sure thing when Sylvain keeps his strokes firm and steady. Too gentle and it isn’t enough, too hard and Felix snaps back out of it almost instantly. 

Right now Sylvain uses his still-considerable strength to pin Felix down, taking Sylvain’s whole cock, making him ride through a whole chorus of reflexive whimpers until he remembers himself and, instead of going quiet, says “Sylvain, ahhhh, Syl,” rocking as much as he can, neck bared in something like submission. 

“You remembered,” Sylvain whispers into his ear. “What an obedient kitten. Go ahead, ride me. Not too fast.” He loosens the pressure on Felix’s hips.

Felix groans - pleasure? Frustration? A bit of both? And levers himself up, gasping shamelessly, hauling himself nearly off of Sylvain’s cock and pressing back down slow and controlled, bracing himself on Sylvain’s shoulders. He moans every time he takes Sylvain all the way, grinds down with desperate little hitches of his hips at the deepest point of every slow thrust. 

Normally Felix rides Sylvain hard and fast until he can barely walk. Normally Sylvain is way on board with that. But this? Watching Felix control himself for Sylvain’s whims? It is, not to use a simple and repetitive word, _ nice_. 

Sylvain does give him a little help. Or the opposite of a little help, really, since every time Felix gets too quiet Sylvain grabs his hips and drags Felix back down, presses balls-deep inside, keeps Felix there shuddering and clenching until his whimpers start up again and then prompts him to go back to the slow riding. 

It works like a charm, too. After a few repetitions Felix is carelessly loud as he ever gets, whining out Sylvain’s name while his thighs tremble with the slowness of his thrusts, flushing impossibly darker every time Sylvain murmurs another string of praise into his ear, _ so beautiful, so perfect, you were made for me_. Usually he’s the one being delightedly loud and Felix is silent, so fond of his stubbornness even when it wins him nothing. Sylvain swallows down his reflexive moans for once just so he can hear Felix’s more clearly, kisses at Felix’s throat to feel the shape of his whimpers, presses up only the tiniest bit when Felix gets close to bottoming out. 

Because yeah, Felix feels heavenly, so much better than any afterlife could ever be, and Sylvain’s getting dangerously close to spilling already. But he wants to watch Felix slowly fuck himself into oblivion just a little longer. In hindsight he probably should have grabbed a cockring, but thinking of logistics like that was clearly beyond him. 

Nothing to do, really, but make sure Felix is satisfied - and satisfy himself by getting to feel all the ways Felix always twitches when he orgasms. At the bottom of the next thrust, in the middle of Felix’s whine - this one’s high-pitched and raw sounding and Sylvain’s just about ready to come just from listening - he grabs Felix’s cock. 

“_Sylvain!_” It’s, like, the closest Felix gets to screaming without about two hours of work, and it’s an immensely gratifying sound. 

“That’s it kitten, come for me, let me feel you clench, let me hear you.” Now Sylvain does grind up nice and firm, strokes along Felix’s cock a little rough, groans himself as Felix’s gasps turn into sharp, staccato whimpers and he digs his fingers bruisingly into Sylvain’s shoulders. 

“Sylvain, _ Sylvain_,” Felix gasps out as he jolts into Sylvain’s hand, coming in thick ropes of stuff that gets all over both of their stomachs. “Sylvain,” a final time, and his clenching muscles aren’t quite enough to spill Sylvain over the top before Felix goes limp with a sigh, still speared on Sylvain’s cock. 

He’s about to gently slip out of Felix and finish himself off, he’s not _ inconsiderate_. But Felix jolts back into awareness when Sylvain reaches for his hips and slaps the offending hands away hard enough to sting. He glares over with that determined stare where he’s going to prove a point and goddess help anyone who tries to stop him, and Sylvain’s stomach jolts, and then fucked-out overstimulated Felix starts moving again, fucking himself onto Sylvain’s dick with a whole lot less coordination. Sylvain just about comes and then just about dies but somehow holds on for a few more thrusts, long enough for Felix’s eyes to go wide and teary and his gasps to turn into little yelps stuck halfway between rapture and agony, long enough for the semi-coordinated riding to turn into desperate grinding down. 

Despite all appearances to the contrary, Sylvain’s pretty good at lasting as long as he needs to. He’s not one to disappoint his partner. When he finally comes, grabbing Felix and thrusting up as hard as he wants, it’s partly from the delicious grip of Felix around him but mostly? Mostly it’s from the sheer concept of Felix exhausted and oversensitive and _ using himself _ to get Sylvain off. 

And then they’re both done. Felix collapses for good this time, slipping off Sylvain’s softening cock and fitting himself into Sylvain’s arms. 

“_That _was something. You okay there, kitten?” 

Felix laughs. “Of course I am. You chose a good way to celebrate.” He also drifts off into sleep almost immediately once Sylvain’s wiped up the worst of the mess, slumbering curled up and content. It's a shame to disturb him, but he’s always grumpy when he inevitably wakes up cold and sore in the middle of the night. 

He’s also grumpy when, despite Sylvain’s best efforts, he wakes up while he’s being carried to the bed. “Shut up,” Felix mutters into Sylvain’s shoulder - still a go-to reaction to anything that mildly inconveniences him. “Put me down.” 

There are arguments that are absolutely pointless, and at the top of that list is everything that involves Felix protesting over being carried around, cuddled, or tucked into bed. Felix loves all of those things but is almost never willing to admit that he loves them.

“Sure,” Sylvain says, and technically does follow the order once he gets Felix over to the bed.

* * *

Sylvain officially inherits early the next year, on a cool spring day during a rare visit to Gautier. The old Margrave is ill; he grudgingly hands the territory over to his only surviving child. No one else can wield the Lance of Ruin, Gautier’s pride and joy. 

As the new Margrave, Sylvain’s first act is ordering the statues ripped from the castle walls. His second act is decreeing Felix’s manor a secondary Gautier capital, which he doesn’t technically have the power to do, but no one who could prevent him is inclined to complain. 

His third act is locking the Lance of Ruin in the treasury and riding out into the no-mans-land beyond the Watchtower with a flag of parley. That first meeting with a few generals of Sreng is tense and difficult and achieves only a brief ceasefire, after which Sreng leaders will decide whether to continue negotiations. It’s more than he hoped for. 

The former Margrave drags himself out of bed long enough to scream at Sylvain about being a traitor to his family, but there’s nothing he can do. 

It will take years of talks before anything permanent can even be considered, years of riding between Fraldarius and Sreng. It will be worth it. 

* * *

Felix is a restless sleeper, has been since he was young. He used to lie in bed determinedly still when woken by nightmares of blood rushing through endless fields, or else take his sword and beat up training dummies until dawn. 

These days sometimes he still spars or paces restlessly until his mind settles. Sometimes he gets up to stare at the shine of moonlight over the endless plains of his home. Most often he stays in bed. Not stone still and determined to fall back to sleep but curled up comfortably against the slumbering man who’s always at his back, breathing in rhythm with the slow rise and fall of Sylvain’s chest until the world seems peaceful again. 

In truth, the world is not peaceful. That will only happen in fairy stories, and Felix still has plenty of use for his blade. Some days that’s a relief, returning to a battlefield and slicing apart one more enemy. 

Some days he longs for the fairy stories. The world is better than it was; perhaps next year it will be better still. Sylvain’s finally inherited - he’ll work on peace with Sreng while Felix maintains trade routes on behalf of northern Faerghus. 

Tonight Felix isn’t sure what woke him at all, and in some ways that’s worse than one more nightmare. He tangles his hands through Sylvain’s hair until he wakes up with a discontented grunt and then immediately reaches out for Felix, tucks him against Sylvain’s soft chest. 

“Bad dreams?” It’s barely decipherable in Sylvain’s half-asleep mumble. 

“I don’t recall.” 

Sylvain huffs a sleepy sigh and shifts, sprawls out across Felix, a huge and somewhat uncomfortable blanket. Felix appreciates it. 

* * *

_ After inheriting their titles of Duke Fraldarius and Margrave Gautier, Felix and Sylvain merged their territories and continued the slow work of rebuilding. They led busy lives, but that only seemed to enhance their bond. After years of negotiation Sylvain forged a lasting peace with Sreng, and after further years of careful work Felix turned Fraldarius into a bustling trade center between Faerghus, Sreng, and Almyra. Their constant competitiveness served them well as they sought to one-up each other in everything from sparring to diplomacy to grand romantic gestures. At the end of their full lives they passed away on the same day, as though conceding that one could not live without the other. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. 
> 
> I'd like to formally apologize to Ashe and Dedue for cutting almost all of their speaking parts. They deserved better and eventually I'll write them a really nice oneshot to make up for it.
> 
> Annette's song fits the tune of Edge of Dawn. Meant to write a few more verses of it, but rhyming brain stopped working.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I never imagined this thing would find such an enthusiastic audience. I'm planning to write some more pieces set in the same continuity, so you know, check back if that's your thing. 
> 
> Now that it's finished and the word count has crept past 85 thousand I'd like to say a last few words: this was supposed to be a oneshot. 
> 
> Anyway catch me yelling constantly about fire emblem @thecaryatid.


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